Horsforth Beer Festival

Horsforth Beer Festival, North Leeds

Jam-packed with Yorkshire beer, Horsforth plays host to its annual beer festival this weekend and some of the pints you’ll find probably haven’t even left God’s Own County to get to your (half) pint glass. Local beers include:

• Great Heck ’Slaughterhouse Porter’
• Hambleton Ales ‘Cheeky Mare’ and ‘Stallion’
• Little Valley ‘Python IPA’
• Ilkley Brewing Co ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ & ‘Ugly Duckling’

Prizes for the most memorably weird and wonderful beer (and brewery) names go to:

• Dicky Ticker Brewery
• Leadmill Brewery’s ‘Old Mottled Cock’
• Bazen’s ‘Zebra Best’
• Blue Monkey’s ‘99 Red Babboons’
• Millstone Brewery’s ‘Tiger Rut’
• Nutbrook Brewery’s ’Cow Juice’
• Old Spot’s ‘Dog in the Barrel’

The Hop, live music and real ale pub opening in Leeds this March

Wakefield’s finest are coming to Leeds in the guise of The Hop, the live music and real ale venue of Ossett Brewery’s pub armada. Situated in the Granary Wharf area of Leeds overlooking the reinvigorated quayside, The Hop will sit under two of the previously disused railway arches that are tucked away between the confluence of the Leeds-Liverpool canal and the River Aire.

I’ve been watching the empty unit over the last few weeks and months, gradually turning from a blank canvas to a vaguely pub-like skeleton as I pass by. Today’s walk to the bank was considerably brightened by the sight of a new sticker in the window, shouting loudly ‘Opening on Friday 26th March!’

The Hop will take the tally of great pubs within a five minute walk of where I work to new heights, with the ‘thes’ of Grove, Commercial, Adelphi, Cross Keys and Midnight Bell fame all located a short stumble from each other.

Photos by me and my good friend Rick

Bridgewater Place towers over Granary Wharf form across the Leeds-Liverpool canal and is one of the views from The Hop. Pic (c) Mark Fletcher 2010

The 3 new buildings and canal basin at Granary Wharf near Leeds train station. Left to right: Candle House (apartments), City Inn (hotel) and Watermans Place (apartments). Pic (c) Rick Harrison 2010

The striking angular form of Waterman's Place at Granary Wharf, just a moment's walk from the site of The Hop. Pic (c) Rick Harrison 2010

Love ‘em or loathe ‘em, you can’t help but admire the enthusiasm of BrewDog and their ability to make fantastic tasting beers; not to mention their boundary pushing exploits with Toyko*, Tactical Nuclear Penguin, and the controversially named Sink the Bismarck!

The driving force behind BrewDog’s’ anti-establishment attitude is James Watt: entrepreneur, fisherman and head of all things penguin.

This week James gets stranded on our desert island with only a handful of beers and an interesting luxury item to keep him company…

James Watt, BrewDog Head Penguin

The Beers

James, which beers would you want to have with you if you were stranded on a desert island? And you’re only allowed one of your own!

Barrel Aged Speedway Stout by AleSmith, 12% – “An absolute masterpiece. I would rink it from a snifter I fashioned from a coconut sitting by the fireside on the beach in the evenings”

Ruination IPA by Stone Brewing, 7,7% – “A savage IPA from the dark princes of big, bold irreverent beers. I almost cried the first time I tasted this it was so good”

5am Saint by BrewDog – “Our new 5% red hop bomb. Insane hop flavours and dangerously drinkable”

The Meal

You can also take one meal to go with your beers, what would it be?

“The 7^th wonder of the world that is the Pizza Hut buffet”

The Record

“The men’s 100m freestyle. I am going to have to catch my food and escape the sharks!”

The Book

“My one, I might even get a chance to finish it if I did”

The Luxury Item

“Is Natalie Portman a luxury item?”

We’re trying to sort out Natalie Portman right now. She doesn’t like pongy ale much though and was a little bit unsure about eating nothing but Pizza Hut buffet until a rescue party arrives. Perhaps if we swap the 100m freestyle record for some music we could tempt her?!

The arrival of a fresh sprinkling of snow brought a genuine chill to this morning’s hangover which will have been evident for all to see by the look on my face as I pulled back the hotel room curtains this morning. Last night a group of 20 of us went out in Nottingham to celebrate the upcoming nuptials of a school friend who happens to be marrying another school friend. They keep it all pretty local down in Banbury!!!

Anyways, I was a bit apprehensive as the last time I had shared a hotel room with the monkey deposit retention and severe violence were only avoided due to the good nature of the hotelier and the patience of fellow bloggers. In the event everything went to plan, except that my team lost at indoor football and the fact captain collision (my new nickname for the Monkey) ceded his hard earned third place in the team go karting event meaning that our best efforts could only raise us to fourth. So we emerged from the hotel this morning feeling the inevitable effects of not exactly getting nine hours sleep.

Usually my recipes here offer suggestions of what beers to have or contain beers themselves. This one does not. Basically days like today will usually see me eating a more healthy tea than any other time as I look to make last night up to my body and stick out an olive branch to see if it will forgive me. Oh yes, this is my detox soup!!!! Soups are really simple to make and generally contain a lot of stuff that’s really good for you (NB – I am not a scientist and if challenged have absolutely not substantive evidence with which to prove this claim….I will merely look you confidently in the eye and try and baffle you with a load of numbers!!). OK so it takes a while to chop up all the veg and I like to simmer mine for an hour or so but it only needs the occasional stir and a big pot will last days, can be frozen, shared with friends or taken to work for lunch.

I think the basis for every good soup is a couple of onions (today I mixed two small white onions with two small red ones), a good few sticks of celery finely chopped and about four carrots. You will also want a 500ml carton of passata and a litre of veg stock – I use bouillon which is the Rolls Royce of veg stock in my book. After that the only missing component is a good armful of fresh seasonal veg. I wanted a real winter warmer so had

Swede (1 medium)

Parsnip (2 medium – quite a strong taste in soups and stews I find)

Broccoli (2 heads)

Savoy Cabbage (1)

The method is simple, chop up the onions and fry them in the bottom of a big stock pot in a little oil over a low heat. Peel, chop and add all of the other veg, stirring often and ensuring the pot doesn’t get too hot. Throw in the passata and stock, cover and simmer for an hour or until the veg is soft. I like mine all chunky so you can taste to goodness. If you prefer it smooth get the old blitzer out and give it a blitz.

Finally I add some little pasta things called seme di melone which you can’t get in the supermarket but can get at Leeds market. This adds a bit of backbone to the soup. Talking of backbone if you want to spice it up add a couple of red peppers and a pinch of chilli flakes if you prefer it a bit spicy. I also served it with some cheese on toast as you can see which probably pulled a bit of the goodness back!!!!

Winter Soup

Beer apps for the iPhone

Mashable's guide to iPhone beer apps is mainly US focused

Social media enthusiasts Mashable have published a list of beer apps for the iPhone ranging in price from free of charge to $4.99. From finding the nearest brew pub to swotting up on beer styles, there’s a selection of beer related applications but unfortunately for us UK beer lovers the list seems very US centric.

iBeer seems to be a very similar to the pointless but kinda entertaining Carling iPhone app. Gallagher’s, iBeers Pro and BeerCloud are all applications that let you research a plethora of beer types and styles and include functionality including beer search, beer finders and beer reviews.

DrinkFit counts calories whilst Happy Hour,  Find Craft Beer and Guinness Pub Finder all focus on buying beer either on- or off-trade (again, in the USA). The one that stands out for me is iBrewMaster which allows home brewers to record the vital statistic of their brews and has 50 recipes built in. I’ll get Sam to try it when he does his next batch of pale ale (that somehow turned out like a Belgian blonde!)

We’ve also come across a few other apps recently including BrewPal (similar to iBrewMaster we believe), FreeBooze, Beer Pong, Beer Brands and iDrink! which keeps track of your evenings drinking according to the Huffington Post.

In the UK there’s less choice although I’ve seen the NHS units tracker in action a few times but not yet heard any feedback on the Good Beer Guides iPhone app.

I’m a conscientious dissenter from the iPhone revolution, plucking for the gorgeous but virtually app-free HTC HD2. So if beer lovers out there know of more beer iPhone apps (or apps for Android, Windows or another platform) or has tried any of the UK focused applications please let us know.

And even better if you build iPhone or other apps, please start building them for Windows Mobile too, we need them to!

As an adolescent I was lucky enough to have three excellent  local pubs, all within 200 yards on the same road. Set back from the road The Horse and Jockey was a lively pub with one bar and a lounge with dart board, pool table and Sky tv. The beer was lager, one or two hand pulls of something like Hooky Bitter and at one point a Chinese takeaway operating in the back room servng takeaways to the hungry inhabitants.

Opposite, with one side to the road and the other to the lane, was The Plough. Old Jim who ran it was an irritable character, reminiscent of a grumpy adult from a Roald Dahl book. He even looked like he’d been hand drawn by Quentin Blake, all crooked lines and scruffily shaded in. Jim brewed himself (not a beer I would part with hard earned cash for!) and held a beer festival of sorts each year. The pub had no telly, a few handpulls and served food on tables built from ancient Singer sewing machines.

Less than a very short stones throw away was the pub I spent most time in, The Bakers (officially The Bakers Arms). I played for the pool team, had a brief stint behind the bar for a few months and learnt to play 3s and 5s with Mo the landlady. The bar was small, with an even smaller lounge to one side and down a hall a smaller again pool room. Atleast 3 Leeds fans frequented it and whilst the beer was all kegged big brand brews, there was one handpull (Hooky or a cask from one of the larger national breweries). I learned to drink with John Smiths smooth, Snakebite & Black (or Diesel if you prefer) and cold, crisp Carling –  valuable lessons for my first weeks at university.

There were weeks I’d not step in The Plough or the Jockey at all, and then days where I’d do all three. Each one was different and each one had different regulars. Each one also had drinkers who went through stages of favouritism and all had odd deserters who jumped ship from time to time. Each pub was needed and they are all still there, open for lunch and evenings where possible.

I returned this Christmas. Popping up the Bakers I bumped into two old friends within seconds. The sports teams still compete all through the week: darts, pool, dominoes, Aunt Sally in the summer and a weekly quiz. I spotted Scott, the pool team captain, still popping in for an after work pint. Mo, since retired, was starting up dominoes in the corner. Hannah was behind the bar. I nipped to The Plough with my Dad.  Surprisingly they’d invested in a single flat screen tv in the bar area and dolled up the lounge, it almost looked like a restaurant. Jim had handed over to his son and possibly even someone else since but no-one quite knew.

These pubs are real pubs. Community pubs. They don’t make huge margins on beer sales, no matter how its served or what brand it is. They feed the local football team on a Saturday, they play cards on a Friday; people go there for warmth, to imbibe and to leave the day or the week behind.

These pubs won’t win a CAMRA award. But they are the most important community centres in the area they serve.

The weekend just gone I visited my cousins in Cheshire. They are 9 and 5 years old (I think!) respectively and are bundles of noise and cheekiness. Despite spending the weekend calling me by my brothers first name in a bid to wind me up, they don’t half make me smile, especially when they (well, their dad, my uncle) took me to their newly opened local beer shop.

The Beer Emporium, Sandbach

The Beer Emporium is a small but well stocked beer shop in Sandbach, a quirky and slightly curious town, situated straight off the M6, with a far reaching history that’s most prominently displayed in the Sandbach Crosses, a scheduled monument dating back to the Middle Ages. Despite the wood framed buildings and a posh deli stuffed to the rafters with fine foods and continental delicacies I’m assured that the town is sports mad, with barely a dash of culture amidst the football posts and cricket stumps (the last bastion of hope is WH SMith’s, the only place you can buy a book). The ancient looking pubs are beautiful from the outside but to my shame we didn’t have time to venture in them with the young cousins in tow.

I liked the Beer Emporium because its emphasis is on local beers. There’s a solid if unadventurous Belgian inventory and a fine UK selection, but both were top-trumped with a wide selection of beers from Cheshire, the North West, the North Midlands and beyond.

Given the amount of away weekends in February and March which will be zapping my wallet for everything it’s got I plumped for just 7 beers: a kriek for Sarah (mandatory on visits to beer shops); a Lagonda IPA and an Orval to sample with my uncle; and 4 local beers to bring back to Leeds (2 of which didn’t make it past 11pm on Saturday).

Half the Lagonda was drunk and half or the other half ended up absorbed in kitchen roll in the front room (the joys of entertaining kids eh!) whilst the Orval was eminently pleasant as usual and wolfed down quicker than expected. I enjoyed Lymestone Brewery’s thinking man’s beer aptly named Ein Stein (Maris Otter + German hops) whilst I was underwhelmed with Dunham Massey’s Cheshire IPA.

I just hope this tiny little shop finds enough business to sustain itself. I’m told it’s the sort of unique retailer that opens up all the time in Sandbach…the implication being that all too regularly they shut down as quickly as they appeared.

Cheshire can keep its footballers wives but if you happen to be passing, try Sandbach, and call in the Beer Emporium. They’ll give you a free beer mat with your beers too.

By the way if any folk in Cheshire or the vicinity of Sandbach fancy some Marble Special or Decadence (included the fruity ones) they are in stock at The Beer Emporium! And whilst you’re there I recommend the ice cream from the little gelateria, amazing!

Terrible beer, great name.

Flying Dog Raging Bitch - orange in colour; orange in taste

Of course not, it’s the other way round. Disclaimer starts here: I love this beer.

I first sampled The Bitch at the Flying Dog UK tasting in Leeds. This 20th anniversary beer jumped out of its take-home tetra pak like a bat out of hell. Its nose blasted my clean out of my seat and before the night was out it was on its way to being a beer phenomenon.

Raging Bitch’s Belgian influence is the first thing that strikes me: it’s fruity esters and yeasty sweetness that only Belgian beers can pull off. Until now.

Massive grapefruit pith and outrageous sour fruit intertwine with a sweet malt finish and a bitter attack from an armada of late hops. The nose is huge thanks to a dry hopping assault by Amarillo hops. You pluck out the names of most of Sainsbury’s exotic fruit aisle if you close your eyes; for me the grapefruit ebbs and flows against tangerine and apricot.

Flying Dog made quite an impression at their tasting session in Leeds last year

There’s moments when this beer doesn’t work. In short, fleeting moments it’s all a bit too much and the flavours clash rather than blend. But in a whisper the contradiction becomes a joy and it’s easy to become engrossed in your own self-indulgence (as your (my) tasting notes may also do).

An IPA this is not. Categorically. A wonder of brewing? Maybe. A great beer? Yep. It’s sublime, it’s mad, it’s uncompromising. It’s a great beer, with a terrible name (copyright Mr Zak Avery, 2009).

Rick from Bier & Co shows off a carton of Raging Bitch, Flying Dog's 20th Anniversary beer, and my Beer of the Year

Let me start by saying I’m not sure I gave this beer a fair run (which is an inadvertent pun!). I’ve just run 8 miles, never a good time for beer tasting. I doubt it was my fastest run ever but it did entail an hour and a half of running up the hills of Morley (of which their are seven, just like Rome, and Sheffield), over the Huddersfield-Leeds train line, across muddy fields, all the way along Churwell Hill, across to Dewsbury and back over the M62. In the rain. You know that rain. The rain that soaks you reet through.

Dunham Massey IPA and parsnip soup

On my return, after 2 x hamstring stretch + 2 x abductor stretch + 2 x hip flexor, but before my super hot sauna style shower, I popped open a beer whilst I liquidised the soup that had been simmering in the slow cooker.

This was part of a haul from the Beer Emporium in Sandbach, one of the first I picked up because I can’t help but be drawn to anything that says IPA on the label/pump clip. It poured very well for a bottle conditioned IPA, very clear, with a copper gradient and deep amber colour. Its nose and taste belied its appearance: I would expect it to be much more yellow and thinner because it tasted pale and gaunt, despite some upfront hop flavours and a little bit of biscuit.

The nose was floral and fairy liquid; the taste was bland and the texture watery. The hops didn’t provide any zest; the malt provided little sustenance. Without impact and without complexity or challenging bitterness this beer didn’t cut the mustard. It was drinkable, but because it was easy to drink rather than it being interesting, salivating or uncharacteristically smooth.

Perhaps my late supper (the unliquidised broth of parsnips and sweet potato left over from soup-making) wasn’t a good partner. Nor the last of Sarah’s milk and white chocolate Milka that provided my muscles with the sugar they’d been craving since the Tingley Fish Bar junction (about 6.3 miles in). Either way, I didn’t enjoy this beer. I’ll look out for it again and hopefully try in bottle and on cask. It could have been a bad ‘un, as despite leaving the sediment virtually untouched the last pour had a distinct farmyard character to it. But somehow I think it’s just a bland beer.

I’m disappointed as Dunham Massey sound like a brewery I could really like: they were relegated from Cheshire to Alty (and therefore Manchester) because of administrative jiggery-pokery and they create craft beer from a National Trust site, both of which appeal to my instinctive love for an underdog. I hope the rest of their beer portfolio has a bit more umpf to it (I don’t half fancy their Cherry Chocolate Mild!)

I pondered (as any self respecting vacuous nobody would) over the reason for this beers inherent washing up scent. I’ve heard Saltaire Cascade accused of the same washing up liquid nose, but as far as I can see Cheshire IPA doesn’t use Cascade hops, so I’m (with insufficient brewing experience) going to blame either the Fuggle or the Goldings that it is apparently finished with. I’m not sure that is the cause though, anyone have any ideas?

Maredsous Brune (or Bruin)

It seems that my previous claims that I wasn’t really a fan of Belgian beers were completely unfounded (or simply founded on inexperience). A few years ago I assumed incorrectly that all Belgian beer = wheat fuelled turbo Hoegarden.

Maredsous is a great example how Belgian beer can be the antithesis of my previous perception: deep brown, fruity, with no pungent wheat head or overly fizzy body.

From the church wine nose, through stewed fruit – figs or prunes perhaps – this is  rich, sweet affair, almost caramel on the tongue. There’s a wisp of chocolate that arrives from nowhere to spice things up as well. It finishes softly but that isn’t such a bad thing.

This is a rich, mouth-filling beer; but with it’s gentle finish it’s the sort of beer that could become one of my staple ‘have a couple in the cupboard beers’.

Maredsous is brewed by Brouwerij Duvel Moortgat, better known as the makers of Duvel. The Benedictine monks don’t make the beer, but they do make cheese that sounds amazing and I’m seriously considering a little trip over to the region to see some of their produce first hand.

Maredsous Brune: licensed from the monks of the Maredsous Abbey, an old and beautiful Benedictine monastery near Namur in Belgium