Saltaire Brewery

I finally got round to visiting Saltaire brewery on Friday night for their 'beer club' night. The last Friday of every month the brewery opens its doors and the local public stream in to drink the brewerys beers straight from the source. As a fan of their beers I'd been meaning to visit since the first time a year or two back I'd seen the night advertised. A short train journey from Leeds saw myself and a friend at the brewery for around 7pm to meet Shipley resident Rob and Matt from Hopzine.

The brewery is located in an old generator house originally used to power Saltaires trams, and is now filled with a beautiful custom built 20 bbl Moeschle brewery from Germany. The building is half visitor centre and half brewery with two bars and various informative signage dotted about. Its a really welcoming place and on a warm June evening was the perfect place for any beer lover to be.

We started the evening with a pint of the 'Summer Ale" a 4.0% a really refreshing blond ale conditioned to perfection as you'd expect with it not having to travel more than 100yds. Next up was the Amarillo Gold, a 4.2% pale ale with the lovely distinctive grapefruity Amarillo hop flavour. On my way to the bar for our next choice I managed to collar Tony Gartland head brewer and one of the breweries founders for a quick chat.

Tony was busy collecting glasses and looked very content to have a full brewery full of people enjoying his beer. We talked about what a success the 'beer club' nights were and he told me they can expect to sell about 20 casks (1440 pints) on a typical 'beer club' friday night. It made me think how nice it would be if more breweries had regular open nights like this. There really is no better way to taste a breweries beer than straight from the brewery, the beer looked after meticulously from its inception and completely as the brewer intended.

Our next pint was Saltaires flagship beer "Cascade" pale ale, packed with citrussy Cascade hops with their lovely lip smacking flavour and tangy bitterness, and again on perfect form. Next up was the Raspberry Blonde, a beer of theirs I tried last year. Described as having "delicately infused raspberry flavours" I actually think the raspberry flavour in this beer is really strong. It has a great assertive fruity raspberry character that your mouth thinks is going to end up sickly sweet but finishes nice and bitter making you want another drink. Its not a beer I'd want pint after pint of but its definitely one to try.

We were already running out of time before we had to leave for our train but managed to slip in a half of another of Saltaires acclaimed beers 'Hazelnut Coffee Porter'. I had tried this beer before and drinking it again brought back the same feelings. Its a beer that tastes (maybe unexpectedly) just as described, there is sweet coffee and a chocolate charachter in there but the flavour and aroma is dominated by a fruity hazlenut flavour. Its a really unusual and interesting beer and well worth trying if you get the chance.

Unfortunately the recently crowned SIBA champion beer "Triple Chocoholic" wasn't on cask on this visit but I loved it so much in the bottle that its a good reason for me to return soon.

If you can get there, you really should try and check out a Saltaire "beer club" night, great beer in a beautiful slightly quirky brewery. Ill be back as soon as I can.

We've recently started listing Saltaires beers here.

There's a great profile of Saltaire brewery on Hopzine.com here.

Summer Quarter 52 week beer club

Our summer quarter cases of the 52 week beer club are now ready to ship. If you're not aware, the 52 week beer club is a great way to sample some of the beers featured on myBrewerytap. Members receive 52 beers over the course of a year (13 bottles quarterly) and we also include tasting notes and complimentary gifts.

Last quarters case was incredibly well received (how great was the Fyne Avalanche?!) and we’ve pulled out the stops to deliver you another great selection of beers for this quarter. In this case amongst others there’s a former national SIBA champion in Ossett Breweries ‘Excelsior’, there’s also a bottle of ‘Pitchfork’ from the multi award winning RCH brewery and a bottle of the champion beer of Hampshire 5 years running (and a 90%+ on ratebeer.com) Oakleaf Brewery’s ‘Hole Hearted’.

As ever these beers will be available as a single mixed case on the site. We’re also now offering an alternative mixed case ‘myBrewerytap mixed brewery case 2’ featuring an alternative range, you can check it out here.

We hope you enjoyed the free curry sauce from The Curry Sauce company, their complete range of sauces are now available in the ‘beer related foods’ section of the site here. This quarter your complimentary gift is a bag of that quintessentially English pub snack, Pork Scratchings! Not just any old scratchings, they’re the award winning ‘Q’ pork scratchings from the Black Country recently voted the best in the country! We’re continuing to search out other great ‘beer related foods’ so if you’ve any suggestions please let us know.

We’re always looking to receive suggestions for new breweries or beer related products we should be listing so please get in touch on the website or via Twitter (@myBrewerytap) or Facebook (search for myBrewerytap).

myBrewerytap continues to go from strength to strength, we are now featuring 70 breweries (over 400 beers not generally available in the supermarket) including multi award winning breweries such as Saltaire, Hogs Back, Dark Star and Crouch Vale. If you haven’t had a look for a while please take a few minutes to browse the site and see if we’re listing some of your favourite beers.

A full list of this quarters beers can be seen below, you can join the 52 week beer club here.

Riding to the pub..

My other main passion in life apart from beer is riding my mountain bike. Traditionally this is done every Tuesday night with a group of extended friends but I also try my best to sneak in rides around family duties. Most of the time this is the odd hour or two at weekends, but at this time of year when the evenings are longer I often go out on my own to do a loop of the local villages and woods. Part of the reason for this is the excercise and making sure I'm fit enough to 'keep up' on a Tuesday, but a big part of it is that its also a great excuse to get out for a pint...

Ive concocted what I think is the perfect "quick blast" route. To save boring you too much I'll try and condense the route. It starts with a very steep quarter mile drag up tarmac to gain some height. After leveling out I can catch my breath I then head into some woods which skirt the crest of a hill for a brilliant half mile of flowing singletrack path before emerging at a small village.

Another mile or so on road brings me to a large pine plantation cris crossed with bike routes, full of rooty pine needle scattered singletrack, with bumps, lumps, berms and an optional (if I'm feeling brave) full on downhill course. After this I pass through another small village before climbing up through another set of woods on the return loop. Another couple of miles of wooded track, a train track and river crossing, a couple of walls to negotiate and I'm on to the home straight. I'm about 8 miles into the ride now and a steady pull up a quiet country lane brings me to a major point of the excercise ... The Rose & Crown at Thurstonland.

Now this isn't a perfect pub by any means (the food could be better IMO) but its a great rural village pub, perfectly placed for my little route lying as it does at the top of a big hill which my house is at the bottom of. The pub has certainly improved in recent years though, It now being a sort of a brewery tap as the landlord is a partner in Brass Monkey Brewery. The bar features seven hand pulls which usually (although not always) feature 3 or 4 Brass Monkey offerings and 3 or 4 guests. They've also recently filled their fridges with a number of good imports: Orval, Flying Dog, Liefmans etc...

This part of my solo rides is usually spent sat at the bar or outside if the weather is nice. Sometimes chatting to the locals, sometimes trying to warm up, and sometimes contemplating the nettle stings and bramble scratches on my legs. More often than not I'm lost in thought, completely relaxed basking in the contentment of a well earned beer and, really enjoying my pint in that post excercise glow that seems to heighten flavours and experience.

A couple (or 3) drinks is usually enough and then Its time to strap on a light, put a jacket on (as its usually dark and cold by now) and brave the kamikaze chute which takes me down a steep rocky and dark path between farmers walls and hedgerows for a quarter mile roller coaster ride before depositing me, laughing and often more scratched/stung at the bottom of the path almost within spitting distance of my front door.

Tonight was the perfect evening for this ride, I didn't even decide to go until 7.30PM but I'm so glad I did. The weather, the ground conditions, how I rode, the peace and quiet, the beautiful countryside, the promise of beer all conspired to make it a very uplifting couple of hours. Unfortunateley the cask selection wasn't very inspiring tonight but a couple of Flying Dog Pale Ales more than made up for it.

Right time for another beer...