King for a Day - brewing in North Yorkshire

Great Yorkshire Brewery

OK, I sell beer for a living, I like the shiny bottles, I like the clink the bottles make (by the way, two Wild bottles clinked together is the best clink in the business!!), I like dusting the bottles, I like the little fizz you get when the bottle cap is lifted before drinking...... I never wanted to be a brewer, I don't have the patience, I'm not into science, the beard....I don't have the beard!

.....but that all changed last week. Without a beard (just a two day growth as a nod to craftyness, but really my lazyness) I turned up in deepest North Yorkshire with brewing on my mind..... and loved it, really loved it.

Back in September 2013 I was a teacher and on my final tear filled day in the job my lovely colleagues at Barnsley College gave me a leaving gift, a voucher for a Brewing Day at Great Yorkshire Brewery in Cropton, just north of Pickering. Fast-forward nearly 12 months and here we are, I used the voucher last Wednesday and became a first time brewer.

Great Yorkshire Brewery have a lovely brewery tap, The New Inn at Cropton. After an early start I arrived just in time for a full on breakfast at 8.30am, great service, plenty of juice, toast, bacon and mushrooms...is this how all brewers start the day, no wonder most of them are tubby!! Head Brewer Alan joined me for a cuppa and a bacon roll and then he gave me the look, that 'are you ready to brew' look and I followed him down the path to the brewhouse.

Beer School

After a few hand-shakes Alan handed me over to Dave and that was it, me and Dave were the two man Great Yorkshire brewing team for the day. It was time to brew Great Yorkshire Classic (aka Cropton Two Pints until quite recently). Within just a few minutes we were staring into the mash tun as steaming hot water and malted barley poured in from above. Dave stared hard (like a boxer glaring, unblinkingly at his opponent), using his experience to watch the mash as it filled the gleaming container... we were looking for a soft liquid porridge type appearance and after a few adjustments of the flow from me, he gave the thumbs up, we had done it.... it was time to wait for nature to start its sweet magic.  

Used mash for the hungry piggies

During this first wait my lessons began, Alan spent time taking me through the brewing process, from the field to the pint pot - I learnt the lot, asked loads of questions and got well explained, easy to understand answers every time. Recent visits to study and brew in the USA had equipped Alan with an amazing amount of knowledge and he was happy to share it, great lessons!!

Back in the brewery we carefully twisted a few knobs and the sweet wort flowed into the copper and then the boil began. Again we had to wait, brewing certainly does involve lots of clock watching!! After a good boil it was time for the hops and these were added at various stages to offer bitterness and flavour to our brew. I also managed to dig out the used mash tun and after being told it should take me 10 minutes, Dave took great pleasure in reminding me that 15 minutes had passed..... but I'm thorough, you can't rush in a brewery.... the whole atmosphere and ethos just slows you down!!  

Pitching Yeast

After a heat-exchange cooling the hopped wort was transferred to the fermenting vessel (FV4) and not long after I was pitching yeast into the brew, taking very great care to be as clean and quick as possible during the process. Yeast doesn't like any surprises, it seemed that this was a particularly crucial part of the day! Our beer was left to ferment for a week, but my day was far from done.

Milling Barley with Art Brew John

After that I managed to squeeze in a session milling the following days barley with John from Art Brew, (a very clever brewer from the south west who is up in Yorkshire over the summer), I counted yeast cells through a microscope, recorded various data relating to PH, gravity and time and also managed to upload a few social media pics despite Cropton seeming to have no phone signal at all :-(

The final part of my day obviously involved a bit of research tasting, fruity Yorkshire Red Lager from the keg was followed by several moreish pints of cask Chocolate Orange Stout in the beer garden of the New Inn. All the team were there...Alan, Dave, John, Daz (logistics, they said he just moves stuff around the brewery), Shaun (the delivery van driver), Pete (think he liked to drive the fork lift) and a few village friends. The Great Yorkshire team is a great one, they made me feel incredibly welcome, showed passion for the job, and pride in their beer. They move into their new brewery soon and deserve all the success they will get.  

It was an excellent day and evening, I would do it again tomorrow and would recommend this to anyone with an interest in beer, you would enjoy an outstanding day..... I did.

You Fancy Another?

Sean
x

Brew day costs £99 - click here for more details.

Bottle Share 3 - love, laughs & a late night!!

We started at 7pm and some we're still drinking as 2am approached.... this will be forever known as the "Fairly Long Night"!!

Sharers by candlelight

Chris, Kate, Kirk, Simon, Laura, Michael, Kieron and Sean with a very special guest appearance from craft beer legend Derek Foster. Sheffield's very impressive Shakespeare's pub was the venue and beer was the subject, let the festivities begin.  

Twobeergeeks blogger Michael opened up the night with a beer from his past and occasional present. With family ties in Shropshire and the surrounding area (Wales), Michael offered up Monty's Brewery Sunshine, a 4.2% pale which was a fresh, comfortable start to proceedings. Likable, easy to drink but perhaps lacking (as it should) any real bite, Sunshine was received warmly but without screams of delight (5.25/10 was the average score). Kate got to her feet next and proceeded to tell everyone that Buxton Far Skyline is the greatest beer of all time and apparently she has had eight bottles a day for the last six weeks (she bloody loves that beer!!). A 4.9% dry-hopped berliner weisse took Kate back to a wonderful afternoon in Buxton and the beer was received very positively with an average score of 7.34 out of 10 - impressive!!

Laura was up next and blended two beers into a story of love, anguish, passion & despair. The reaction from our group was a mixture of hear-felt sorrow and juvenile giggles (by me), but Laura is a wonderful storyteller and delivered up Nook Oatmeal Stout and RAW Grey Ghost IPA for us to taste. Two contrasting beers served from two pint cartons, Laura had forgotten it was Bottle Share 3 and rescued her evening rather cleverly. Scores of 5.5 and 3.75 respectively meant that the beers went down with reasonable positivity and then disappointment!

New sharer Simon rolled into town next and served us some Californian sunshine.... well not quite.... Simon had famously enjoyed a Gibraltar drinking session on Stone Cali-Belgique but being unable to nail that particular bottle he introduced us to Stone Smoked Porter, a 5.9% bottle of darkness that scored 6.38 out of 10, a good score and an impressive first Bottle Share from Simon. Sean (me) got to his feet next and maintained the Stone theme. At the first two Bottle Shares I'd served up 11% and 12.4% beers and so I wanted to show my subtler side with a single figure ABV. We all tucked into Stone IPA, a modern classic and 6.9%. Well received at 6.63 out of 10, but generally agreed that Stone IPA gets vastly overshadowed by its big brother Ruination, a shame.    

Kieron had a confident look in his eye and as he grabbed his bottle of Beavertown Appleation he was smiling like a man who knew he had a winning lottery ticket. At 10 years old Kieron had been given a taste of Gold Label Barley Wine by his thoughtful neighbor Sue. That early taste of a famous beer had left its mark and so Kieron wanted to pay homage to this iconic style. Beavertown Appleation is a boozy (8.7%) barley wine made with Champagne yeast and bramley apples....yes, I know it sounds gorgeous....it is, and the group agreed. A very impressive 8.13 out of 10 was bagged with minimum fuss. 

Confident Kieron!

Down to the last two, and hang on..... Kirk also had the look of a lottery winning ticket holder as his hands grasped an impressive bottle of Odell Footprint. Perhaps the most ambitious beer ever, Footprint is made up of at least one ingredient from the 11 US States that Odell distribute their beers in. Ingredients included prickly pear, honey, green chilli, corn and grapefruit....all it lacked was balance and an appealing flavour - a score of 3.88 out of 10 tells you everything you need to know, a disappointment, an ambitious disappointment. 

......and finally, here comes Chris, trusted manager of our stunning venue tonight. Chris had scrapped all attempts at Locale and decided to introduce us to an 11% beer that in Norweign tradition had been sent across the globe to benefit from the temperature variations one experiences when crossing the equator.  This beer was brewed at Bridge Road Brewers in Beechworth, Australia. It was then aged in red wine barrels on its journey to Norway, before being blended and bottled by Nogne Brewery. The beer is called Aurora Australis and was acclaimed by some and disputed by others. A tidy score of 7.55 out of 10 took it very close but not quite close enough to displace Beavertown Appleation as beer of the night!! 

I left hurriedly just before 10pm, perhaps this blog represents just the start of the night, more beers were supped, more conversation flowed, more reputations enhanced.... a quite excellent Bottle Share 3!!

You fancy another?

Sean
x