Saltaire Beer Festival

This year Fletch and I made our second trip up the Northern line to taste beers and soak in continental drinking at the Saltaire Beer Festival. We discovered this gem of a brewery last year, whilst wandering around the Saltaire Arts Trail on a hot and sunny Saturday, and ever since we’ve been waiting to go back!

Saltaire Brewery

Saltaire Brewery is based on the Leeds/Bradford canal, a little nearer to Shipley than the world heritage site at Saltaire. It’s a modern affair from a contemporary and friendly brewery, with visitors on the beer festival weekend sitting inside the brewery building, with two bars crammed in the space that isn’t dedicated to fermentation tanks and brewing equipment.

70p is all it costs to get the train from Leeds to Saltaire Brewery

The first piece of news about Saltaire beer festival is how cheap it is to get to Shipley (the nearest train station to the brewery) from Leeds. An off peak return from Leeds costs only £1.40 – to put that in context a single from Horsforth (on the edge of Leeds) to the city centre of Leeds costs me £2.50 on the bus…how cheap is £1.40 to go double the distance?! Beer club is now firmly on the table as an option for starting a Friday night in the near future…watch this space!

Once we were on the 70p train Fletch and I turned the conversation towards our last visit to Saltaire Brewery. It had been for the beer festival last year although we had arrived mid afternoon on the Saturday and most of the guests had already sold out, but not this year we congratulated each other, thanks to Andy we had managed to get tickets to the sold out Friday night when everything was sure to still be on. We were heading towards a temporary Mecca of real ales and we had a strategy in place…

Brewers Gold at Saltaire Festival

The plan was to split up the beer list between us; in general Fletch would focus on the darker offerings and me the paler ones. There were 26 beers (listed below) on the list meaning that we could each have 13 halves and have sampled every beer available. Well we tried!!

Some of them we both wanted to try and some of them were worth revisiting for a full pint, needless to say that the strategy did not come to fruition although, in fairness, I think that there were probably only about six or seven beers that one or the other of us did not try. Under the circumstances it would be frankly impossible to try and offer tasting notes on every beer that we tasted, therefore the whole menu is listed below (sorted by brewery). Our five top beers of the festival are marked with an asterisk (for the sake of fairness I have also marked those that we did not try with a minus).

Acorn Brewery, Barnsley

Harvester
Mittlefruh IPA

Castle Rock, Nottingham

Reed (-)
Black Gold*

Crouch Vale, Essex

A lot of beer goes through a lot of pipes to keep the pumps flowing at Saltaire Beer Festival - thanks to Tony for taking us on an impromptu tour!

Hurricane
Brewers Gold*

Elland Brewery, Halifax

Catch the Rainbow
Night Porter

Great Heck, North Yorkshire

Union Gap
White Rabbit

Ilkley, Yorkshire

Ollcana Gold (-)
Ollcana Original (-)

Jarrow, Tyne and Wear

Slake (-)
Rivet Catcher

Old Spot, Cullingworth

Chilli and Chocolate
It’s Beer

Ossett Brewery

Cherry Porter
Summer’s End

Saltaire Brewery, Shipley

Raspberry Blonde (-)
Saltaire Blonde
Rye Smile (-)
Triple Chocoholic
Hazelnut Coffee Porter*
Cascade Pale Ale*

Wylam, Northumberland

Dognobbler
Northern Kite*

Westons Cider, Herefordshire

1st Quality Draught (-)
Traditional Scrumpy (-)
Old Rosie (-)

Although I have not named them, there were a couple of beers that I did not find exactly overwhelming. In the main however the beers selected for the event were wide ranging, in both style and origin, and sparked debate and discussion amongst the many beer fans at Saltaire. It was a quality evening and a great opportunity to meet many likeminded people with a passion for beer, a great opportunity for swapping recommendations and stories, finding inspiration and generally getting a little bit layer caked with a great bunch of people.

I’m already looking forward to next year and am hoping to dampen the wait with a few visits with some of the locals to Friday night drinks club in the meantime.

This week saw the end of Newcastle Brown Ale production in the North-East, as Scottish & Newcastle Brewery, one of the largest brewing conglomerates in the UK, announced they are shifting production of ‘Newcy Broon’ to one of their other plants in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire.

This marks the end of over 90 years of a brewing tradition in the North East and ends an association that has become mutually synonymous for both the locality and the brand.

This couples with the current threat hanging over the Tetley’s brand, with a reported shift of the famous Leeds beer to Northampton when Carlsberg closes the Tetley’s brewery next year.

Here at Real Ale Reviews, we champion innovation and development in beers, and could possibly be expected to be pleased to witness the downfall of the larger brands as their multinational owners struggle to balance vast production and decreased sales (resulting from, I am sure,  the growth in desire for a quality pint of cask ale as opposed to a bland ‘Smooth’ brand). However, there is a strong argument in the defense of traditionalism in brewing culture.

Myself and Mark met at University and one of our close friends is a Geordie. One of the first drinking memories I have of our friend is his pride as he introduced us all to the joy of Newcastle Brown. He made sure we were drinking it at the correct temperature; in the correct half-pint glasses and told us of drunken adventures he had enjoyed growing up in the North-East.

The Geordie was by no means an ale drinker, preferring the cost of cheap lagers that dominated the Uni years. But this was one of the things that he could show off to his new companions – Newcastle had a recognisable brand to be proud of. (Predictably, his other pride was Newcastle United Football Club, but that’s another story!).

As certain household brands came under corporate ownership, they immediately lost that sense of belonging and connection to the local community. No matter what promises a large company might make about retaining an interest in the region, money talks and it soon becomes apparent that large companies such as N&S (themselves owned by the Carlsberg Group) didn’t get themselves into positions of international importance by remaining in one place.

Discussing this move on internet forums, one thought that came across was the idea that some of the large brands that are seriously struggling would benefit from a move away from the larger owners and start afresh in a smaller, dedicated operation that produces the ale for the sheer love of it, putting some pride and care back into the brewing procedure.

Of course, this is a pipedream and there is certainly no shortage of excellent breweries across the country doing this with their own brands. But there is a reason that certain ales have survived as long as they have, outliving their contemporaries and continuing throughout a world that has changed dramatically around it.

This is far from the end of Newcastle Brown in terms of a production beer, but taking it away from its hometown makes it just another beer.

On my way back from Nottingham today I stopped off in Newark-Upon-Trent to have a look around. I had accidentally driven through the town centre before and had always said I wanted to go back and have a proper look around, plus I wanted to stop in at the MileStone Brewery as I was passing. Unfortunately I had the car so was unable to drink but was confident that the historic brewing town would have something to offer a designated driver.

The Town

Newark Castle overlooking the Trent

I parked up in Waitrose (free parking in the town centre – don’t get that everywhere!) and headed across the river towards the castle gardens. Although the Castle itself has seen better days, there is a small museum and tourist information centre in the gardens and, after a 10 minute briefing, I headed off into the town centre. Newark seeps history from it’s narrow streets and it isn’t just the beer related sites that are worthy of note. In the Market

G H Porter, Provisions Store

Square, where there were a number of collectables stalls along with the usual fruit and veg traders, the place that most caught my eye was the  G H Porter ‘provisions’ store – serving traditional cooked meats, pies and canned goods, as well as serving teas. Also of note was the town’s Shopping Arcade and the whole square is overlooked by the Buttermarket building, converted to house a number of boutiques and eateries as well as the town’s museum and art gallery.

Frontage of The Old White Inn, now a Building Society branch!!

Turning to more beer related sites of interest, the Market Square has the pictured 15th Century frontage, this building used to be The Old White Inn but is now home to a branch of the Nottingham Building Society. Also in the square is this picturesque Wychwood pub.

Wychwood Pub

As I was driving this was the only pub I ventured into on the day and unfortunately the interior did not live up to the promise of the outside. However, as I did not have the time to go round all of the watering holes on offer (I will be arguing for a Real Ale Reviews group outing by train next time I get together with Fletch and Lanesy) I leave it CAMRA to sum up the drinking potential of the town.

Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, I’ll say it: I’m sick of it as well. For well over a year now, we are bombarded with horrendous doom-mongering phrases such as ‘credit crunch’ and people cannot talk about ANYTHING without the grating expression “…in the current climate”. Yes, it’s a bad situation; but in the face of adversity, I often prefer to take a look at the positives, if only to have a holiday from the negatives for a while.

Which is why I felt a glow of enthusiasm whilst browsing the various news sites and blogs this morning and noticing there was much talk of the financial success and growth of Skipton’s Copper Dragon brewery.

Now I confess, I have a huge soft spot for CD; their Golden Pippin ale was the first beer that truly converted me to real ale, and began a sequence of events that has led me and my companions to invest a ridiculous amount of time talking about, writing about and (most importantly) brewing beer. In a garage, using a converted Hotpoint Twin-tub washing machine, we have spent around nine months simply trying to create an imitation of our favourite beer (for the record, our recipe is tantalisingly close now; brew three gave us a lesson, however – you CAN have too much alcohol in beer!).

It is this kind of creative spirit and dedication to finding a high quality ale that has generated a rapidly rising industry that is on the way to becoming big-business. There is money to be made in running a relatively small brewing operation it seems, if a professional approach to business and high quality of products can be achieved.

In the past year, Copper Dragon has increased turnover by 50% to £4m, as well as moving into a new £4.5m brewery and visitor centre last November and increasing staff levels by half.

This is an incredible growth for a fledgling company of seven years competing in a market that has in the past been considered very tricky to break into.

Other micro-breweries across the country are also making huge leaps in production levels and standards. Mark Dredge over on the ‘Pencil and Spoon’ blog reported on his visit to Thornbridge’s new multi-million pound brewery that looks incredibly advanced and futuristic in his photographs (also see Reluctant Scoop‘s photos of the opening). As well as the move (and increased capacity) the company were projected to be reaching sales of £650,000 this year, another company that was only founded this decade (in 2004).

All the evidence of why such companies are increasing their trade can be found in the confines of a neatly-packaged glass bottle. The breweries have developed exciting brands and terrific, boundary-pushing flavours that can only have been blended together by those who are excited, and want to excite, with their craft.

The country may be bust, but the boom of one of the most exciting growth industries continues through the hell of recession (there – I said it; no need for that phrase again!).

BrewDog goodie box

I got a very excited text from my girlfriend earlier on today, informing me that a rather large box had arrived from a certain Scottish brewery.

I have to admit I was really looking forward to getting home and opening it, so it’s typical that I didn’t get back home until about 8.30pm thanks to work, my own incompetence and a quick trip around Ikea (the downside of living so near one is its so easy to ‘go for a quick wander whilst it’s quiet’!!)

So, I was delighted to get home and realise that Sarah hadn’t been exaggerating, it really was a large goodie box that had arrived!

Unfortunately, the lovely folk at BrewDog might have selected a box that was a little too big, and as I eagerly opened my grandly wrapped package I was greeted with the smell of very strongly scented soggy cardboard and a distinctly beery smell. Read the rest of this entry »

Just got back from my first Thursday night music quiz night at the Rosebud near Rothwell, South Leeds.

The Rosebud is Sam’s local pub, located on a quiet road of houses that overlook pleasant fields. It’s one of last pubs in the area that still regularly brings in guest ales and is a nice little spot for watching Leeds United with a real ale in hand.

Anyhow I met Sam and the chaps and the four us got to trying the guest ales, which were Ginger Pig by Springhead (who’s web site SEO isn’t great!), Sharp’s Cornish Coaster and Copper Dragon’s Golden Pippin.

Copper Dragon's Golden Pippin - pride of the Rosebud pub this Thursday

Firstly I ordered a half (yes, it’s a school night!) of Ginger Pig which had caused an amicable rift amongst the table; Sam believing it to be a little heavy whereas the rest believing it nice and refreshing. The elusive Springhead Brewery have created a straw coloured beer that is light and, if I’m honest a little bland and watery.

Perhaps it’s just very subtle, but this beer is named after it’s core differentiating ingredient, ginger. This is no Blandford Fly by any account, but whilst it sips easy and is refreshing and enjoyable, it’s not much more than pleasant and would benefit from a little extra complexity and depth. Not that it’s bad, I can se it been ,much better on a hot day as a refreshing light ale, but just not as entertaining as I was expecting on a dark and rainy night.

Second up came Cornish Coaster, one of Sharp’s ‘Other Beers’ (again with the poor SEO – titles of their web pages could with some improvement!).  Now this beer is interesting! In my notebook I simply wrote ‘you can taste the country air’ (which would have been the first line of my review had I taken a picture of it). Read the rest of this entry »

Scottish micro-brewery BrewDog has hit the headlines this week with its claims about the impact of its new beer Tokyo*, which founder James Watt claims is “providing a cure to binge beer-drinking”.

His claims are based around the idea that anyone that wants to get inebriated will turn to stronger beers (such as his brewery’s 6-unit, 18% ale) and appreciate the flavour so much that they will not need to turn to “mass market, industry brewed lagers that are so bland and tasteless that you are seduced into drinking a lot of them”.

Of course, this is patently untrue – and it is more than likely that Mr. Watt knows this.

BrewDog, in its brief two-year existence is quickly becoming the rock n roll star of the micro-brewery world. As reports this week have reminded us, the company has previously flirted with controversy over a name given to one of its products that refers directly to drug-use (apparently; I wouldn’t have known said term if the BBC hadn’t informed me!)

But all publicity is good publicity and this is clearly the case here. BrewDog are now probably the most discussed brewery in the country and that can’t be a bad thing for them. I personally, love their manifesto. The aim is to target the younger market and turn them on to quality Real Ale and away from the cheap, common lagers popular amongst this demographic. In terms of Real Ale popularity, it is great achievement that such a young company, run by two clearly enterprising individuals, is taking the corporate alcohol producers head-on.

What they have also done with these statements is to highlight an issue that has plagued Britain for years; we don’t know how to appreciate alcohol consumption, certainly beyond the high-culture of fine wines.

We have never had the ‘café culture’ found abroad, where alcohol is consumed in a more respectable manner, and it is this side of the BrewDog argument that is strong. Growing up in the UK, drinking beer, wine, spirits and so on, is often more focused on quantity as opposed to quality. Although specialist bars and ale houses are growing in popularity, much of the city centre remains dominated by low-standard, low-priced alcohol which has ultimately become the norm.

Therefore, if companies like BrewDog are brewing special ales, such as Tokyo* – a run of three thousand units, of which only one thousand will be sold in the UK exclusively on the firm’s website – is this really such an issue?

All this debate has done is to highlight the country’s insecurities about its own drinking culture. BrewDog won’t change that, but at least it is putting the control back in the hands of consumers to try new and innovative ales, no matter how strong they may be.

Anglo Dutch Brewery – Summertime Ale, 4.1%

Having been critical of The Porterhouse earlier this Summer for not being fully stocked with light, golden, summertime brews I could hardly go into the Cross Keys, Holbeck, on a warm sunny day and not try this topical summer number.

I do not know much about the Anglo Dutch Brewery but, according to their website, they were officially launched in 2000 and they haaven’t had a history update since 2003. Nor could I find this beer on their website (www.anglo-dutch-brewery.co.uk) so I was going into it slightly blind but very willing.

I was more than happy with  the result which was enjoyed in the evening sun behind the Cross Keys. It is hard to believe, sat drinking a beer in this peaceful spot, the other areas of Holbeck only a short walk away.

The beer itself was slightly yellow, rather than the anticipated golden. It has cirus flavours and was quite sharp to the taste, coupling this with the rather flat texture it was reminiscent of a more full bodied version of the traditional bottle with a slice of lime such as Corona or Sol. Perhaps a great British alternative to the these hispanic imports.

The beer certainly deserves to be treated more seriously than the comical light it paints itself in. The picture may be too small to show it but the caption says ‘Others are cleaning up the all decade merchant bankers party’. My advice is forget the merchant bankers, forget the imported lagers and bash on with a cheeky few pints of this West Yorkshire gem on a sunny night in Leeds.

Corona for West Yorkshire

Hook Norton Brewery: A Short Introduction

I grew up in rural North Oxfordshire and as a child was fortunate enough to have spent a great many happy hours in the gardens of Hook Norton pubs. As an older teenager I played pool on the teams of Hook Norton Brewery owned pubs and, as a young professional living away from home, my first port of call when I go to see my parents is always the local with my old man.

It is therefore with great pleasure (and more than a little nostalgia) that I bring you Real Ale Reviews’ first ‘brewery profile’. I have to admit that I hold Hook Norton Brewery in a highly elevated position amongst UK breweries and in all honesty this is in no small part due to the fact that I grew up in ‘Hooky Country’. However, like the lucky sod who lives at number seven when a beautiful, intelligent girl lives at number five, I have found the quality of what I started with has led it to being the best I’m yet to find.

Hook Norton Brewery’s History

In 1849 a chap called John Harris began what was to become Hook Norton Brewery in his farmhouse. Over 150 years later the now well established business is still in the hands of Harris’s family, currently run by his great great grandson. In the modern age it is testament to the ethos of the business that they have resisted the temptation to sellout in order to turn a quick profit. Equally demonstrative of the traditional principles which run deep in the veins of Hook Norton is that fact that the brewery remains steam-powered, with power being provided by steam engines installed way back in 1899.

While cynics may point at the current trend towards popularity for the traditional and claim that Hook Norton are cashing in, I personally see no merit in this argument. Admittedly the traditional aspects are currently a major pull for a small brewery trying to compete in the modern world. I would even concede that the re-introduction of local deliveries by Dray and Shire Horse in 1985, 35 years after their initial cessation, does appear to be something of a gimmick. But are they not also an important part of helping people to understand the history of what the brewery is about and what it is trying to achieve?

The steam engines that power Hook Norton Brewery are thought to be the only engines in the UK currently put to daily use for their originally intended purpose. For me this is where history stops and innovation begins. It must have been difficult to resist change in times when tradition was not lauded and things could be done more efficiently with new technology. The brewers at Hook Norton chose to do just that and carry on making fine ales in the best way they knew how.

Hook Norton Brewery Today

Reaping the rewards of a rich history is all well and good but one gets the definite feeling from Hook Norton that the management intends on building a solid future on the foundations laid by the brewery’s past. In 2009 they are producing a seasonal beer for each month of the year, meaning that I will be trying some for the first time. The brewery also runs a visitor centre, alongside it’s well stocked shop, giving guided tours of the brewery which include opportunities to sample the beers brewed within.

Please visit their website for more information at www.hooknortonbrewery.co.uk

Leeds Brewery – Leeds Pale Ale

I am sitting in The Grove Inn, Holbeck, following Leeds’ exit from the play-offs. The amount of pale Leeds fans around me makes this the opportune time to review Leeds Pale Ale.

The football team lacked intensity for much of the night and I suspect that most die hard pale ale fans would argue that this beer has the same problem. From my point of view what this beer does have is the smoothness of an in touch Arsenal team. With a reasonably subtle but lingering flavour this beer goes down really well which is just the ticket for getting your depressed Leeds supporting housemate shedded.

We’re off for a major sess and, if you fancy one on the IPA, this could be just the ticket.

A treasure of a traditional pub located right underneath Bridgewater Place

3.8% abv

Brewery: Leeds Brewery