It’s not every day a pop star can bob into the pub and order a pint of their own beer.

Although for most of October that’s exactly what Guy Garvey & co of the resurgent band Elbow will be able to do. From tomorrow, pubs across Manchester – and one in Oxfordshire – will be previewing their collaboration brew, a joint venture with Frederic Robinsons Brewery.

Build A Rocket Boys! beer

Build A Rocket Boys! is a real ale named after Elbow’s most recent album and not only that it’s one with a conscience: a significant proportion of all profits will be donated to Oxfam’s East Africa crisis.

The official launch is at Manchester Food & Drink festival (where you can also find mini festivals of real ale, whisky and Oktoberfest!), but if you can get to one of the preview pubs in and around the city between now and then you should be able to find the first casks ready and waiting.

And with such a lot going on at the festival, we’re off to book our train tickets across the Pennines.

See you there!

Paul Jefferies comes from Burton on Trent and has family connections with the brewing industry going back many generations. He graduated with a degree in Biochemistry from Hull University and worked in Bass Research before joining Allied Breweries in 1988 at the Leeds Brewery as a Production Management Trainee.

Paul held a number of posts at Joshua Tetley (which was then producing in excess of 1m barrels of cask beer a year) before finally rising to Brewing Manager. During his time at Tetley, Paul qualified as a Diploma and then Master Brewer of the Institute of Brewing.

In 1997 he joined Brewery Group Denmark as Head Brewer of Robert Cain Brewery in Liverpool. Paul is now Production and Distribution Director of Hydes Brewery in Manchester and has recently set up his own micro brewing operation in Waunfawr, North Wales, which he runs in his spare time. Big Bog Brewing Company (Waunfawr translates as “Big Bog” from Welsh) is proving an exciting venture and along with his role at Hydes, allows him to do what he is passionate about – brew fantastic beer!”

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Manchester sure does have a lot to answer for. It’s grim Lancastrian streets have provided us with Simply Red, political massacres and one of Britain’s best loved soap operas.

Despite these things, Manchester is a fine city. Red brick turrets and soot covered chimneys etch the skyline, broken up by the knife edge Hilton and the famous Granada television lettering. The streets are more city-like than Leeds – wide life-threatening avenues dotted with trams and other forms of exotic transport. It seems busier too, there are more buses, more taxis, more Greggs.

Casks at the Marble Brewery in deepest darkest Manchester

Outside the city centre Manchester sprawls in all directions. Without the naturally imposed boundaries of the cities of West Yorkshire, or the nearby Pennine towns that look down on the city from Saddleworth, Manchester was stretched like a rolling pin, much like Birmingham. Vast inner city estates and buildings housing myriad industries in ever varying buildings extend as far as the eye can see.

Wandering from Picadilly station the restaurants and pasty shops of the CBD soon turn into taxi offices and warehouses. And more pasty shops. Walking northwards through this area a Loiner might assume it to be the Holbeck of Manchester – once full of industry that fuelled the city’s progress, but now old railway lines and pot holed side roads in need of repair.

Deep inside the vaulted ceiling of one of the railway arches a quiet revolution has been taking place. Marble Brewery occupies a sloping archway, stainless steel vats tucked neatly under the curves of the painted brickwork, just a stone’s throw from their spiritual home, The Marble Arch pub.

And on a grey but dry Saturday in October, a menagerie of beer lovers gather in this magnificent watering hole. Tiled retrospectively to recreate a bygone age, it’s a marvel compared to your average Wetherspoon’s decor.

Twissup starts and familiar friends mingle with new and unfamiliar faces all in search of a perfect pint, whatever your preferred taste or dispense mode. Manchester might have even more to answer for by the end of the night…

Marble Arch, Manchester

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. Read the rest of this entry »

1849 Champion Ale by Joseph Holts

Despite hailing from the ‘wrong side’ of the Pennines (a distinction I realise is entirely subjective and I say with the greatest of affection and genial banter!), the eponymous Joseph Holt of Manchester and his descendents have created a number of really good quality ales over the years, and 1849 Champion Ale is one of the brewery’s most readily available ales.

Hints of fruit jostle amongst the hops that dominate this ale. It has a darkish complexion in taste and colour, which make for a complex but thoroughly enjoyable drink, worthy of it’s ‘Champion’ title.

Traditional ales that really hit the spot can be hard amongst the myriad real ales in some supermarkets (not a bad thing but a good sign of how real ale now commands decent shelf space in the big four chains). If you live outside the North West & The Lakes you may have to go a little further out of your way to find Joseph Holt’s bottles though, as if I remember rightly this was a frugal purchase from Booth’s in Ilkley.

A very rewarding bottle, from a brewery that deserves greater recognition than it probably gets, at least outside of the Greater Manchester area. We’d be very proud of such a brewery in Yorkshire!