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.