Saltaire Brewery with Oz and Hugh...

I don't need much of an excuse to visit a brewery and so when Tony Gartland of Saltaire Brewery invited me along to a special event at his brewery I wasn't about to say no. The brewery has been gaining a reputation and awards in the last few years for its flavourful beers and this had obviously been noticed by Oz Clarke (or his programmes production crew) as they were due to film a section for his new "Oz and Hugh Drink To.." series.

As I wrote about a couple of months ago here, Saltaire Brewery regularly opens its doors for its "beer club" where local beer lovers come to enjoy the Saltaire brews from the source. The invite I received from Tony said this was to be a special "beer club" for invitees only, there would be a free bar and we were needed to help participate in tasting some beers that Oz Clarke and Hugh Dennis had brewed and give our verdict.

I arrived on Wednesday afternoon just after 4pm and met Rob from Hopzine and his wife and about 50 other people milling around outside. We weren't allowed in the brewery yet as they were filming something or other, but the Saltaire staff were mingling taking drinks orders.

After 10 minutes or so we were ushered inside to participate in the filming. After a brief run down from the director on what was going to happen, Oz and Hugh emerged with trays full of sample glasses of the 'beers' they'd made. One was supposed to be a stout type "beer" and one a weird fruit "beer". As far as I can work out they'd both been given a table full of ingredients and been allowed to do what they want with little or no guidance, and it showed.. I wasn't really expecting them to be good, but they were both comically, un-drinkably bad. The 'stout' had a disturbingly sweet, cloying hot chocolate flavour which wasn't pleasant at all, (presumably because one of them had gone mental with the Triple Chocoholic ingredients). The 'fruit beer' was thinner and tasted strongly of cherries but not in a nice way. It reminded me of Rinstead pastils or warm dentists mouthwash. Not good.

Oz and Hugh then passed through the crowd filming reaction to their beers and chatting with the audience. We didn't get filmed but managed to grab Oz for a chat and a quick picture. I don't know how much beer he'd had but he came across well and was happy to chat for a while admitting that neither beer was up to much. I'm not sure how long they'd been filming for but both of them looked pretty bleary eyed to me.

After voting on our favourite of the two offerings the results were read out and the last section filmed. We then headed upstairs to taste some Elderflower Blonde, and the aforementioned Triple Chocoholic , which as expected were tasting great, especially after what we'd just tasted. I left soon after, conscious of the fact that I was in a brewery with a free bar on a school night.

If you want to know which 'beer' won watch out for the next series of Oz and Hugh Drink to.. I'm not sure when its on but I'd expect around Christmas time.

You can buy Saltaire Brewery beers here.