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...

Brewday at Crown Brewery, Sheffield

A quick blog to say how much I enjoyed Tuesdays brewday with Stuart from the Crown Brewery. If you're not aware, the Crown brewery is situated underneath the Hillsborough Hotel on Langsett Road in Sheffield, its a 4 barrel capacity set up and Stuart Ross is the one man dynamo that keeps the brewery ticking. Nothing amazingly out of the ordinary there you might think but Stu continually and consistently knocks out beer that is far from ordinary.

Unlike many breweries who excel at one particular style, (ie pale and hoppy) Stu makes a broad range of regular and one off brews which always seem very well crafted, flavourful and true to style.

Pale Ale, Blonde Ale, Mild, Stout, Porter, Damson Porter, Wheat Beer, Wheat Stout, IPA's, and Smoked Rauchbier are all beers he's produced which have been well received in the past couple of years. Obviously many breweries turn their hands to different beer styles regularly with varying results but Stu seems to nail the styles he attempts first time more often than not which has to be down to more than luck.

More recently he brewed a massive 11.5% DIPA collaboration beer with Stefano Cossi from Thornbridge, which saw them both putting in a 17 hour stint in the Crown brewery to get the beer brewed (this beer will hopefully be available to buy on myBrewerytap later in the year).

It was really interesting to watch Stu brewing through the course of the day, he's very comfortable at work in the brewery, knows what works and what doesn't, never rushing or flapping. I guess to a large degree this efficiency and control is because he's very accustomed to his breweries processes and nuances and understands them inside out. He's an experienced brewer having previously worked for two other award winning local breweries Kelham Island and Acorn, but experience aside he's clearly a natural brewer if such a thing exists.

Seeing different brewers at work is great from my perspective (with an eye on a possible future in brewing myself) and its really valuable for me to get different viewpoints and advice on all aspects of the process. Its interesting that what works for some brewers doesn't work for another.

Stu has been very supportive of myBrewerytap, we set up the business with breweries like Crown in mind, I'm particularly happy that he's pleased with the service our site offers the brewery and we've been really happy to help give his great beers the wider audience they deserve.

You can find Crowns beers on the bar at The Hillsborough Hotel, Sheffield every day of the week and as Crowns reputation grows, at more pubs and beer festivals up and down the country.

Crowns bottled beers are available direct from the brewery via myBrewerytap here.
Follow the Crown Brewery's blog here

Down south for MooR beer

I set off Friday morning for a couple of business meetings down south with the expectation of meeting new business contacts, and the hope of making new friends and the promise of good beer and good company.

After a 3 hour drive I picked up Ed at Bristol Parkway and we headed (after a productive meeting in the welsh borders) south to meet Justin Hawke from Moor beer company. I'd met Justin at the SIBA conference and we'd got on well, a passionate brewer he has a unique view point on the British real ale scene having brewed both in his native US and in the UK. I'd agreed in Stratford that we would come down and see his brewery and taste his beer at the 'source'.

We picked Justin up from his home in the beautiful Somerset countryside and our first stop was a tour of the Moor brewery; a converted milking parlour with a 10 barrel capacity. Justin is a really interesting brewer, his beers have one foot in the US beer scene in terms of their style but he's also firmly entrenched in the UK real ale scene. He's a great believer in traditional beer conditioning but despite winning multiple CAMRA awards doesn't have the same hang ups about methods of beer dispense that CAMRA members usually have.

We left the brewery and after loading the car with Kegs and picking up Justins wife Maryann we headed to the first pub of the night The Devonshire Arms at Long Sutton. First beer of the day was Moor's "Northern Star" a malty beer featuring the new "Citra" hop in large quantity. For anyone who knows Moors beer I'd say this was most similar to their "Revival" but with a maltier body. We also got chance to taste Moors Somerland Gold on draught, that is to say on Keg straight to a bar font. The beer tasted fantastic, perhaps a touch cold but with a great C02 'prickle' and as full of flavour as the cask or bottle versions. Justin had wanted us to taste his beer served this way, and it served as an affirmation to me that, flavour as far as good beer is concerned is not limited by the method of dispense.

We then headed to the awesome Queens Arms at Corton Denham. The Queens Arms is a beautiful pub set in the rolling Dorset countryside and has everything you could want in a rural pub, great beer , great food and great rooms (so i'm told). The pub is all stripped floors and roaring fires but its all done in an unpretentious way and not at all the stuffy "gastro" atmosphere that often attaches itself to pubs like this.

We were fortunate enough to have turned up at the Queens Arms during "Moor Beer Month" and so got stuck straight into "Queens Revival" a dry hopped version of Moors already awesome "Revival". This was amazing beer, pungent aroma hops followed up with smooth malty body and dry citrus finish, a great session beer.

We eventually moved to the dining room for food and enjoyed great steaks and amazing seafood dishes to accompany the great beers we were drinking. Pudding meant a fantastic spread of French Savoie cheese and the main event beer wise; a special dry hopped version of Moors famous JJJ IPA. This is normally a massively hoppy, sweet and piney double IPA in the US style that weighs in at a heafty 9.5%. This version of JJJ had also been 'dry hopped' with fresh Citra hops added to the cask. This gave the beer a massively pungent aroma quality which was fantastic. The beer still maintained its bold sweetness and hoppy bitterness but gained another dimension of pungent piney citrusey hops that dominated aroma and first taste completely.

From this point on the evening got a bit hazy. More JJJ was purchased conversation flowed and time got away from us. We ended up saying our goodbyes swapping a few bottles and vowing to return some time soon. I'd urge anyone who ventures down this way to have a look in to this beautiful pub.

Mark Dredge wrote an excellent blog on the Queens Arms recently here. The pubs website is here.

Spring Update

A quick blog just to update people on happenings at mBt. We've had a really busy start to the year, the 52 week beer club is getting new members daily and we're shipping mixed cases as fast as we can pack them. The last two quarters of the 52wbc have needed re-orders from breweries due to us underestimating demand.

We're continuing to sign up great breweries; amongst others we're now listing beers from Acorn, Crown, Fyne Ales, Williams Bros and Thornbridge who all make award winning, brilliant beer and are really great additions to the site. We've got more great breweries committed to coming on the site and we're approaching new breweries all the time so make sure you're following my Twitter feed or our Facebook page to get the latest news.

The last month has also seen us help Thornbridge launch their hotly anticipated new bottle conditioned beers St Petersburg and Halcyon 09 both incredible beers causing quite a stir in beery circles and which have been blogged and tweeted about plenty. The Halcyon 09 in particular is selling fast and is a limited edition so if you want some you need to be fairly quick.

The new bottle conditioned Jaipur should also be ready to ship shortly, meaning people will be able to get even closer to the intended draught flavour of Thornbridges iconic beer.

In recent weeks we've added beers from two of my favourite breweries, the first is Mallinsons a local brewery who have a dedicated following in the area for their light, hoppy flavourful beers. They're a relatively new outfit and a great advert for the new wave of brewing in the UK. Their beers always sell out first at the local festivals in West Yorkshire and are always worth trying.
We are listing 3 of their regulars beers as well as their Grand Canyon pale/summer ale.

The other brewery we're now listing is just about my all time favourite UK brewery, Marble. I met Dominic one of the brewers recently and was really pleased and flattered to find out he knew about myBrewerytap and was keen to get their beers on the site. Marble are a fantastic brewery who originate out of the Marble Arch pub in Manchester, they brew a delicious range of beers covering a mix of styles and abv's. They're a dedicated bunch and have a real commitment to quality and flavour and their beers are never dull or run of the mill. They're also very good at understated but classic branding and packaging.

The Marble Arch pub itself is a quirky grade 2 listed building complete with sloping floors and vaulted ceilings, the food there is also brilliant. If you ever get chance to visit you really should, Its one of the only "real ale" pubs I visit regularly which my wife is also more than happy to visit, which is praise indeed.

On the "brewing project", I'm hoping to expand my knowledge with some more hands on brewing experience soon and we (me and a couple of friends) are still discussing and planning the best way to go about getting into brewing ourselves. We've lots to discuss!

You can buy Thornbridges beers here , Mallinsons here and Marbles Beers here.

Brewday at Great Heck Brewing Co.

As I mentioned in my aspirations for 2010 blog and with a view to a possible future in brewing, I've been keen to get some hands on brewing experience for a while now, to help better understand all aspects of brewing and what life as a brewer would be like. I've been really grateful to get a few offers from different brewers recently including Denzil from Great Heck Brewing Co, who was very supportive of myBrewerytap from the beginning and who'd I'd got to know at the SIBA annual conference.

Brewers tend to start brewing early and so I was up at 5.45am to drive over to Great Heck a picturesque small village out in the flatlands east of Wakefield toward Goole, and roughly an hour away from Huddersfield.

The first part of the brewing process and so first job of the day was to 'mash in', meaning to mix the malt and liquor (water) into a porridge like soup in order to extract the sugars from the malt. I was glad to find out that the brewery had an upper level and a grist case (hopper) to help mash in as I knew this meant a lot less lifting work. This second floor is also the malt and hop store at Great Heck and thankfully was fully stocked meaning there wouldn't be a load of shouldering heavy malt sacks up a ladder to start the day.

We would be brewing one of Great Hecks regular and most popular beers "Dave" (Dark And Very Enjoyable) a 3.8% moderately hopped dark session beer. This meant mashing in a few different malts, including some chocolate malt to give 'Dave' its dark color. The 'mash' was then left to stew while Denzil made us a very welcome fry up.

After breakfast the next job was to run off the now sweet liquor or 'wort' (containing all the necessary sugars to create the desired amount of alcohol) into the brewing kettle or 'copper' via the underback, which is there to prevent any detritus from the mash ending up in the kettle.

I've been on plenty of brewery tours in the past but I was enjoying seeing the actual brew process in action; watching closely and trying to understand a seemingly endless swapping of hoses and switching on and off of pumps. I was assured that while initially daunting these processes in the brewery soon become second nature.

Once the transfer was complete, and the wort at a rolling boil I was tasked with sorting out the hops for the brew. I was looking forward to this and enjoyed grabbing handfuls of the pungent sticky compacted hop cones out of their foil bags, breaking them up and weighing out the correct amount required. I know they're just part and parcel of the brew process and maybe taken for granted by many brewers but to this novice at least there's something really alluring about hops, they're probably the most visually appealing part of the process and their aroma while recognizable in raw form is often also noticeable in both the flavour and aroma of the 'finished' beer. These particular hops (Pilgrim) were no different and triggered off memories of beers I've enjoyed in the past (but annoyingly couldn't quite place.)

After the hops were added to the kettle and the boil left to finish it was on to the hard but necessary work of digging out the spent grain from the mash tun. This job is obviously one of the reasons why brewers don't mind having apprentices in, but I'd been looking forward to getting stuck in and finding out what these tasks would be like.

As expected it's hard work, (especially with puny wrists) but I eventually dug all the grain out and managed to wrestle the filled sacks out to the yard, where they would wait for the local farmer to collect. As the day wore on the filled sacks made a warm and comfy seat for me to idle a few minutes away in the sun while waiting for various processes to complete!

Lunch was a welcome break and Denzil knocked me up a sandwich which was gratefully washed down with Great Heck's, "Stormin Norman" straight from a hand pump rigged up in the kitchen. The 6.5% hoppy pale ale went down a treat and helped fuel the ongoing lively conversation as the brew day progressed.

After lunch and while we waited for the boil to finish Denzil gave a short master class in cask washing. This is by common consent the least favourite job in the brewery, probably down to its monotonous nature. I was expecting to spend at least part of the day doing it, but thankfully there weren't many casks needing washing and Denzil seemed to be enjoying himself so I left him to it!

Once the kettle had finished its boil it was time to start the transfer of the hot wort (now infused with hops) over to one of the fermenters. Before this could happen I watched on as Denzil performed more necessary processes of switching hoses, re-circulating water, pumps on, pumps off etc.. He then cooled the kettle down and It was once again time for me to experience one of the dirtier jobs on offer, namely scrubbing the kettle down, (which meant getting in it) and removing all the soggy spent hops by hand. This waste from the process was also left out for the farmer, apparently it's "not good for much" but is left out as part of the deal whereby the farmer gets loads of free grain to feed his cattle, which seems fair to me.

It was 4pm by this time and as the brew day was more or less complete (with just a bit more cleaning to be done) and it was time for me to head back home. The day went just as I'd hoped with plenty of laughs a lot of questions answered (and advice gathered) and a bit of hard work, in a very friendly environment.

Denzil was a top host and I'd urge anyone reading to seek out Great Heck's beers, they don't profess to be at the cutting edge of British brewing, but Great Heck's beers are by no means 'traditional' or 'boring'. They're brewing beer for the best reasons, in that it's beer that "they like to drink' and their beers cover the whole gamut of styles from pale session ales through to full bodied stouts and hoppy wheat beers.

I know Denzil is on with the long process of creating decent bottles, which we'll have on myBrewerytap as soon as he does...

For some great background on Great Heck Brewing Co check out www.Beerreviews.co.uk's meet the brewer interview here

Below are some pictures I took on the day.