Happy Birthday Brew York!

Brew York celebrated their second birthday this last weekend, and having been fans of theirs from their very beginning, we just had to pop by their taproom, based right within the city walls of York, to join the party.

We've been consistently impressed since their inception by the level of balance they seem to have found between easy drinking, more traditional cask ales which suit the historical City of York and many of its locals, and the experimental, innovative and unique - often with pleasingly hilarious names. They've progressed massively in just two years and to top it off,  co-founders Lee and Wayne are lovely chaps as well.

As well as it being their birthday, this week Brew York have launched a crowdfunding campaign to support a new phase of expansion which includes the installation of a street food kitchen and a pilot kit. Work on the space for this is already well under way and formed the main area for guest bars and food offerings at the birthday party.

We arrived in the early afternoon and started off gently with a Debaser Berliner Weisse, 2.8%. However, not content with offering just one version of this beer, there were FOURTEEN different syrups to choose from to add to them - we sampled pomegranate, passion fruit and lemon. Then it was on to a Juice Forsyth session IPA, chosen for the lols of the name but bursting with flavour and an excellent beer even without the punnage. It was great to catch up with the guys from Fierce and Mad Hatter over a couple more beers as well, along with delicious Asian-inspired food from Street Cleaver.

We couldn't go home until Laura had tried the total dreamboat combination of her favourite Brew York beer and her favourite all time cocktail - an Imperial Tonkoko White Russian! As the photo evidence below shows, it lived up to the astronomic expectations. Beer cocktails, or "Hoptails", are firmly on the agenda as part of the expansion and we can't wait to find out what other concoctions the team come up with (so much so, we've pledged on a masterclass as part of their crowdfund, get on board guys!).

The event was a triumph - a brilliant showcase of everything Brew York can do (they had 8 casks and 21 kegs of their own on offer), with a great choice of guest breweries, food and cocktails, and a chilled and friendly atmosphere. The current tap room is an asset to York in its own right (it's even got a little beer garden right on the banks of the Foss) and the new space will only serve to enhance and amplify this.

Happy 2nd Birthday Brew York, we look forward to watching you continue to grow and develop for many years more.

Cheers,

Laura and Jim

Wingin' It...

We've got a week off for our anniversary this week, so it felt like a good time to embark upon the noble quest of perfecting the cooking of the humble chicken wing. Wings have to be one of the best accompaniments to beers so we thought we would put together a couple of recipes of some of our favourites and suggested beers to pair with them.

We always buy our wings from our favourite local indie retailer, Mr Pickles, as all of their produce comes from within Yorkshire and they place great emphasis on sourcing all their meat ethically. The chicken is free range and comes from Loose Birds farm in North Yorkshire.

Each of the recipes below is for 12 wings, to serve two as a main course.

First up is a classic wing, the buffalo!

Marinade

2 crushed garlic cloves
2 chillies
Juice of half a lime
Hearty dash of Tobasco
1 tbsp Sriracha
1 tbsp onion powder
1 tbsp each of smoked and hot paprika
Large pinch of salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Coating

100g cornflour
Pinch salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp of smoked paprika
1 egg

Blue cheese dip

2 tablespoons of creme fraiche
75g blue cheese (we used Yorkshire Blue)
1 tbsp mayonnaise
Squeeze of lime juice
Pinch of salt

Method

Combine the ingredients for the marinade with a dozen chicken wings, and set aside in the fridge for 2 hours or overnight if possible to allow all those flavours to work their magic.

Before frying, combine the coating ingredients excluding the egg. Whisk the egg separately, dunk in the wings, then roll liberally around in the dry coating mix. The cornflour will help give these wings a real crunch.

Deep fry your wings for around 7-10 minutes in batches, making sure not to over fill the pan, as this will stop the wings from cooking properly. Keep warm in a preheated oven (180°C) until everything is fried.)

For the dip, crumble the cheese and whisk together with creme fraiche and the mayo, then add the lime juice and salt to taste.

To serve, load the wings onto your plate with a generous heaped tablespoon of blue cheese dip. You'll probably have too much dip, so make sure there's some celery in the fridge for a snack for supper. We decided not to scale down the recipe because surely nobody in the world believes too much blue cheese dip is a bad thing. We made a potato salad with chives and capers to serve alongside.

Beer-wise, a bold IPA is a perfect companion for these wings. You'll need something with a good punchy hop character to stand up to the spice in the wing coating and cut through that rich creamy dip - we chose Brew By Numbers 65/01, their first double dry hopped IPA brewed with Citra and Columbus. Piney and citrussy, it worked exactly as intended alongside the wings.


Next up we've gone for our household favourite, Korean style wings. Again the below is a recipe suitable for 12 chicken wings.

Marinade

1 tbsp Gochujang (fermented chili paste)
1/2 tbsp fermented bean paste
1 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp rice wine vinegar
4 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp light soy sauce
2 crushed garlic cloves

Quick Kimchi

Salad:
1/2 a head of Chinese leaf
1/2 a red pepper
3 spring onions

Dressing:
1 fresh red chili
1 tbsp Gochujang paste
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 crushed garlic clove

Method

Heat all of the ingredients for the marinade together in a saucepan, then pour over the wings and leave to marinate overnight.

Before cooking, make the kimchi. This recipe is for a quick version of this side dish, but it's still pretty damn delicious. First chop the Chinese leaf into pieces around 2cm square and leave to rest in salted water for at least 10 minutes, before rinsing well with fresh water. Chop the pepper and spring onion into similar sized pieces and add to the Chinese leaf. Combine all the dressing ingredients together and mix well, to a loose dressing. If you can't get hold of Gochujang then chili flakes and and chili oil can be used, but really the main character of the wings and accompaniment is helped along by this fermented paste so it's worth the effort of seeking some out. Pour the dressing over the vegetables, mix well and leave to sit whilst the wings cook.

Pop the wings on a baking sheet and grill under a high setting for around 20 minutes, turning every 5 minutes to help them cook evenly and and encourage a crispy skin.

Serve the wings with a hearty pile of the quick kimchi. (The rest of the kimchi will keep in a sealed jar in the fridge for 7-10 days).

This works best with something really crisp and refreshing to drink - we selected Galleon, a dry hopped lager brewed by Fuller's in collaboration with Fourpure for last year's Fuller's & Friends project. The clean character of the lager works to offset the heat of the wings and cuts across the palate nicely without detracting from all those delicious Korean flavours.

Overall, we couldn't choose which we liked best and decided quite simply that we're all winners in the wing off. How do you wing it?

Cheers,

Jim & Laura

Northern Monk: Death and Glory

Northern Monk need no introduction, having produced a wide range of excellent beers since their inception. Death and Glory, released simultaneously in January this year, caught our eye as they are
some of the first beers released under the watchful eye of new Production Manager Colin Stronge (previously of Buxton Brewery) - and obviously we're suckers for the big boozes. We drank them to celebrate the start of our anniversary week off, and here's what we made of these two behemoth releases.

Glory - Triple IPA, 10.5%

Invitingly aromatic, from the nose alone this could practically be mistaken for a glass of fresh pineapple juice. More pineapple on the palate alongside ripe mango and melon with a silky caress of caramel, it's soft and sweet with a sumptuously full mouthfeel. Although we weren't drinking it at it's freshest (the best before date is next month, although at less than three months old and tasting this good we'd argue it could have longer on there) it was still absolutely bursting with an abundantly tropical hop character. Very easy drinking for the ABV and ridiculously well balanced. Glorious indeed.

Death - Imperial Stout, 12.0%

This is a BIG beer. A rich, sweet, aroma reminiscent of black treacle fills the room, let alone the glass, as soon as you pop the can. On drinking, the high ABV is definitely apparent but it manages not to overwhelm the palate, having a nicely balanced yet heavy roast character. There's freshly ground coffee with two sugars and just a dash of cream alongside decadent dark chocolate and just a hint of dried red fruit and berries. The finish reminds you that this is a boozy beer with a lingering, bold residual sweetness sitting proudly alongside a lasting bitterness.


No, we didn't Black and Tan them. Sorry.

Jim & Laura

Bonus Beercat: Tosin displaying relevant expressions to suit these two very different beers

Beer review: Track Brewing Co.

Based in a railway arch a stone's throw from Manchester Piccadilly, Track Brewing Co have been on our radar for a good few years now. Making some of the finest cask and keg around, they made the move into bottles in November last year, so we grabbed a few of their new releases to give the range a try.

Sonoma, 3.8%

Track's flagship, and enormously popular pale ale. This beer is regarded by many as the absolute epitome of what a sessionable cask beer should be all about, so we were excited to see how the journey into smallpack had treated it. Soft citrus on the aroma as we would expect from this beer, with a beautifully delicate hoppy bitterness on the palate balanced by a sweet malty backbone. Crisp finish, perfect for it's ABV. Easy drinking, refreshing, and whilst definitely reminiscent of its counterpart in cask it's just not quite the same. We couldn't put our finger on exactly what was missing, maybe we need to start pulling our bottled beer through an Angram... but having said that it's still bloody delicious. Stock the fridge high.

Koda, 6.5%

A brand new to us lactose IPA. On the nose it's all orange sherbet; creamy, fruity and with just a hint of enticing sharpness. A good punch of vibrant hop character (it's brewed with Mosaic, Centennial and El Dorado) sits happily alongside the silky smooth mouthfeel. It's ridiculously well balanced and manages to simultaneously leave behind both bitterness and a lovely sweet reminder of what was in your glass.

Tenaya, 8.0%

A Citra and Galaxy Double IPA that pours a very pale hazy yellow. The aroma reminded us of mango Rubicon, but with that characteristic New England yeasty bite bursting through too. Tropical notes galore with flavours of passionfruit and more tasty mango, with hints of apricot lingering in the background. The bitterness doesn't overpower, which can so often be the case with this type of beer. A great example of the style.

Overall, then, it's fair to say we were pretty impressed with our first taste of Track's bottled releases, not that we expected anything less. The bottles themselves look beautiful, and it's nice to see a brewery new to smallpack choosing to package into glass rather than can - an increasingly rare move, but it certainly seems to be working for them so far. Their taproom is open on Fridays and Saturdays now too, so it looks like a trip across the Pennines is on the cards for us soon.

Cheers!

Gin cocktails

I'll be honest, my gin collection is starting to get a tad out of control. I used to think gin was just gin - a simple spirit, with little to distinguish one brand from another. This assumption is increasingly wrong in a market which is continually improving, with a greater variety of different distillers producing gins which are carefully thought out, innovative and ultimately delicious.

It's upon drinking them neat that the nuances of flavour can be picked out and pondered upon, but many of the gins on my shelves lend themselves equally well to cocktails, with the characteristics of each neat gin determining the additional components I like to try alongside them. Here are a few of my current favourites.

NB Navy Strength Gin

A Craft Gin Club discovery, NB Gin hails from East Lothian, Scotland. Neat, it's very balanced and a beautifully classic London Dry style gin, however at 57%, although it remains smooth and has a good burst of citrus, the strength is a little too apparent for me to appreciate the gin fully without a lot of ice (which helps to open out the flavours) and a lemon twist for garnish.

Craft Gin Club labelled this the perfect gin to make into a martini, and who am I to argue with perfection?! To a very cold glass (this is important), pour a double measure of NB Navy Strength, add 10ml of extra dry vermouth, stir and garnish with an olive - simple as that, but so much more complex on the palate than it is to make. My olive garnish was another item from my Craft Gin Club box - Alco Olives, themselves infused with NB Gin! Overall, I'd say this is a heavyweight gin which although tasty gains greater balance and drinkability from a cocktail.

Sibling Gin

I absolutely adore this gin. The first time I tried it (in the Devonshire Cat in Sheffield, which has an excellent gin menu), it absolutely blew me away with a massive hit of what I perceived as bubblegum flavour - something I've never experienced before in a gin! According to the Sibling team (actual siblings themselves!) it's quite common for people to pick up on bubblegum notes from the blueberries used as one of the botanicals. It's got a gorgeous, very slightly earthy, fruity edge to it and it's so unusual. Highly recommended.

In a cocktail, I thought I'd play more on the blueberry elements within the drink and stirred the gin down with a small spoonful of blueberry jam and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, before topping up with prosecco. Decadent and delicious. This gin also makes a beautiful G&T, with Fever Tree tonic and a few blueberries to garnish.

Robin of Locksley Gin

Our most local gin! Based just a ten minute walk away from our house, we absolutely love this gin and the folks who run it are fantastic as well. The gin neat is light and zesty, with a slightly floral aroma and an incredibly smooth, balanced palate bursting with fruity citrus.

For the cocktail, I decided to use an ingredient from another of our local favourites - Birdhouse Tea Co. The citrus and grapefruit notes in the gin I felt would work really well with peach flavours, so I iced a cup of my favourite Princess Peach sencha green tea and added a good splash of Locksley gin. The cocktail was finished off with a squeeze of lemon juice, a tiny splash of sugar syrup (to taste, my friend preferred it without the additional sweetness) and garnished with a piece of pink grapefruit. As an aside, Birdhouse have just opened their own tearoom, bar and restaurant and it is STUNNING. Sheffield, pay attention - they have a tea cocktail menu too!

Brandon's Gin

An American gin for my final choice - this one hails from Rocktown Distillery in Arkansas. This one was recommended to us by the fantastic Starmore Boss, one of our local booze purveyors and without a shadow of a doubt the most knowledgeable. Neat, it's crisp, fresh and almost a little creamy on the palate, with a beautiful honeyed character for an almost silky finish.

For a cocktail, we chose a Souped Up Negroni. Now, the classic gin, vermouth and Campari mixture is boozy as hell as is. But I couldn't pass up the opportunity to mix up the Brandon's with the bourbon from the same distillery - a Negroni/Boulevardier hybrid, if you will. We mixed a shot each of the bourbon and gin with half a shot of red vermouth and Campari. The result was bitter, ridiculously boozy and very grown up, full of Seville oranges with an oaky backbone from the whiskey which helps set it apart from your standard Negroni. Not one for the faint hearted, but definitely and defiantly delicious.

Cheers!

Laura

Golden Pints 2017

This year's been full of beery highlights. From trips to Dublin, Barcelona and Copenhagen, to UK festivals including Peakender, the Beavertown Extravaganza and Leeds International, all alongside working in the industry we so love, beer's been pretty difficult to escape at times but we wouldn't have it any other way. Here are some of our favourites of the year...

Best UK Cask

Winner: Torrside - Route 366 (Torrside Brewery Taproom) a 4.2% pale ale, with masses of flavour from Cascade and Ekuanot. Exactly what we want from a cask beer, full of flavour, great aroma and condition, but also easily sessionable. Perfect.

Honourable mention: Wilde Child - Opaque Reality (Beer Engine, Sheffield). Mango and passionfruit milkshake IPA, what's not to like?!

Best UK Keg

Winner: Fierce - Cranachan Killer (Herbert Kilpin, Nottingham). Dessert beers are often a hit in this household and this one hit just the right notes - sweet, fruity and creamy without being heavy, aromatic and packed with raspberry flavour. Yum.

Best UK Bottle/Can

Winner: Beavertown x Green Cheek - The You Zoo. We'd fallen out of love a little with Beavertown's new releases over the past couple of years, but this collaboration is one of the best beers of theirs we've ever tried. Brewed with yuzu juice and oolong tea, it's PACKED with flavour yet still ridiculously quaffable with every element balanced in perfect harmony.

Honourable mention: North Brewing - Volta. A rhubarb and blood orange sour that was fresh, zingy and hit just the right spot as part of a summer's picnic!

Best Overseas Draft

Winner: Crooked Stave - Nightmare on Brett (P Mac's, Dublin). I (Jim) love this beer more than pretty much anything. Even at €9.95 a half I still went back for another after the first half. It's an incredible 9.666% oak aged dark beer, with rich acetic acidity, bold flavours of cherry and deep oak, akin to a Flanders but the additional alcohol helps with the mouthfeel, that is sometimes lost in long aged beers. The only beer that makes me pull this face...

Honourable mention: Flying Couch - Gangrene IPA (Fermentoren and Ørsted Ølbar, Copenhagen). Exotically fruity and freshly tropical IPA, balanced by delicate pine. A fine example of the style.

Best Overseas Bottle/Can

Winner: Garage - Middle Child. We drank this at the new Garage brewery in Barcelona on a scorchingly hot day. We'd been on a long underground ride followed by a ten minute walk and this was just blissful refreshment and totally kicked off Laura's love affair with Ekuanot.

Honourable mention: Funky Buddha - Wide Awake It's Morning. An imperial maple bacon coffee porter that managed to do exactly what it said on the label. Simply sumptuous.

Best Collaboration Brew 

Winner: Lervig/Mikkeller/Lindheim Ølkompani - Pop That Cherry. A turbid mashed mixed fermentation beer brewed at Lervig and fermented with cherries from Lindheim's farm in Norway, this is a beer with a beautiful balanced acidity, a really well rounded oakiness and layers of light acetic acid, making it dance across the tongue.

Best Branding 

Winner: Naparbier/NaparBCN. Kinda creepy, in a cool way. Loved their bar in Barcelona too, which seemed to embody their branding entirely - something that's not often achieved.

Best UK Brewery 

Winner: Burning Sky - This year, every beer we have had from the brewery in the South Downs has been outstanding. Burning Sky produce a great core range of exceptional while also reliable and sessionable pales and IPAs, alongside their always quality Saison La Provision. But really they are our brewery of the year down to their aged and wild beers. Favourites this year have been Saison L'été, the base beer of which was flavoured with elderflowers foraged locally to the brewery, then flavoured in secondary with whole gooseberries, and Les Amis du Brassage, a mixed ferm saison blended with three year old lambic. Both utterly delightful. With spotaneously fermented coolship beer in the pipeline from this year, and big releases of Cuvee blended with Lambic that are released annually, we fully expect their meteoric rise to continue in the new year.

Honourable Mentions:
Buxton for their continued consistency and quality.
Torrside for their incredible affinity for rauch malt.
Thornbridge for always on form core cask and keg beers as well as great specials during 2017 as part of their Year of Beer.

Best Overseas Brewery

Winner: Brekeriet - their wild fermentation beers have been part of a real awakening of sour and wild ales across the beer world, and they have been making some of the best thought out and well produced, blending traditional methods with modern techniques with absolute panache. More specifically we've loved Lilac and Cassis from bottle as well as Fruit Salad on draught at the Beavertown Extravaganza.

Pub/Bar of the year

Winner (UK): Rutland Arms, Sheffield. All of the elements of an amazing bar were already there, but the new ownership this year of Chris (formerly of Shakespeare's) and Kate (Three Tuns) has nurtured all of this and allowed it to fully flourish. The best food available in a pub (calling it "pub food" isn't really fair) in the city, ever improving beer selection and always the promise of raucous fun with the jukebox.

Winner (International): Abirradero, Barcelona. Quite simply for ticking all of the boxes... Astonishing beer range, the most delicious food, great staff and stylish inside to boot. We wrote lots more about this place here.

Best Taproom

Winner: Torrside. We mention these guys A LOT so it's probably no surprise to see them popping up more than once on this list. A brief paragraph can't do them justice, so we'll refer you back to this handy blog post we wrote after visiting them for their second birthday celebrations.

Honourable mention: Runaway - we loved their event celebrating the launch of the cross city brewery and street food collaboration project for Manchester Beer Week. A great space which although busy managed to maintain a relaxed atmosphere and all round nice vibes.

Best Beer Event

Winner: Beertown Malton. Co-ordinated by Bad Seed and Brass Castle breweries and held in the Milton Rooms in picturesque market town Malton, Beertown is a real celebration of, well, beer! The range was beyond compare, with cask and keg from all corners of the UK and beyond, the atmosphere was electric and we met so many brilliant people. Cannot recommend this festival enough.

Honourable mention: Our first visit to the Independent Salford Beer Festival was mega - we can't believe it took us four years to make it.

The top two here definitely shows that really, for us, the small and intimate is king. We enjoyed the Beavertown Extravaganza a lot, but it didn't quite have the personability that these two both did.

Best Beer Snack

Winner: Holy Crab - we've been lucky enough to come across these guys on a number of occasions this year, including at Belgrave's Food Festival event in Leeds and at Runaway's taproom in Manchester. Fresh oysters with tabasco, crayfish subs and crab fritters have all tickled our tastebuds this year and the first moment of trying their crab mayo was an epiphany.

Honourable mention: Tunnock's Teacakes, served for a brief but joyous time at the Railway Hotel on Bramall Lane.

Twitter Account of the Year

Winner: Pilot Brewery @pilotbeeruk, really who else would it be?!

Honourable Mention: Tom @Craftbeerhour for building a fantastic community. We can't wait to see what Tryanuary brings with Tom at the helm!

Here's to 2018... cheers!

Jim & Laura

The Whisky Industry in 2017: Our Thoughts

We love whisky, and all that comes with it. However, there is a side to whisky that is often regarded as a little fusty and old fashioned. Strict rules and regulations regarding what the essence of whisky really is means that the industry is often seen to be taking itself very seriously. I think it's fair to say that until recently, the industry in the UK, specifically in Scotland, has been and continues to be bound by the limits of tradition. And a lot of the time this is perpetuated by the drinkers, who can be keen to scorn when anything other than a couple of drops of water are added to a dram. More than anything else we drink, whisky seems to be the one that has a perceived "right" way to enjoy it.

BUT. This year in particular we've started to notice the emergence of an entirely different facet to whisky, as the industry begins to unleash its playful side!

This was exemplified at this year's Whisky Show, where we attended a Whisky Highballs masterclass with writer Dave Broom. Five good quality whiskies, including Hakushu, Laphroaig 10, Kilchoman Machir Bay and Monkey Shoulder, were paired with selected mixers including cola, ginger beer and soda water. The results were elegant, fun and crafted to allow the flavours within the dram to continue to shine through (following extensive research conducted by Dave Broom himself, who meticulously tasted each whisky with a range of mixers to find the best pairings). This was not a case of "ruining" a good drink by any means, but was more about providing an alternative and making whisky suit more occasions, moods and indeed people. Demonstration of Laura's "Not giving a fuck if you don't like the idea of my delicious Laphroaig and Coke" face below.

As the range of whisky available increases, the potential of distilleries seemingly expands. Indian single malt producers Amrut are generally not able to classify their spirits as "whisky" in the UK, due to their short maturation periods (often less than the 3 year minimum ageing required for Scotch whisky) which work for them thanks to the far higher temperatures that increase wood contact. However the spirits they produce are certainly up to the standard I expect from a premium whisky. We very much enjoyed the Spectrum 004, aged in barrels re-cooped with staves from four different wood types, resulting in a wonderfully well crafted dram. Another delicious offering from Amrut was the sherry cask Naarangi, the world's first single malt to use orange peel, further demonstrating their experimental capabilities.

Another new (to us) distillery this year that got us all excited was Starward, from Australia.  After chatting to their rep, he was keen to point out that they are not constrained by tradition, stating that the Scottish are good enough at Scotch, so why would they try to recreate this? Instead they use innovative techniques (including integrating brewers yeast into their recipes!) and native wine barrels to produce a truly distinctive and delicious whisky that's approachable yet interesting... and makes an absolutely outstanding Old Fashioned!

We've noticed too that whisky is seemingly beginning to take lessons from the gin renaissance that we're experiencing in the UK at the moment. New distilleries are popping up at an almost alarming rate, with many of them initially releasing gin but with a view to producing whisky in the future - some of whom are approaching three years old and will be releasing their first single malts over the coming year or two, the Lakes Distillery and Bimber being just two examples. The gin scene in the UK is arguably more inclusive and regarded as more "fun" and current than the world of whisky, but now the lines between them are starting to blur and as far as we can see this will be a positive thing.

So, to finish off, we'd say there's a hell of a lot to look forward to in the whisky industry over the coming few years. There'll undoubtedly always be a place for a rare, refined, well aged dram, enjoyed with just a touch of snobbery, there's nothing wrong with that - but neither too is it a problem to try something a bit more edgy. The key thing is - it's your whisky. Buy what you want, judge for yourself where you're getting the value, and drink it however the hell you want to. Think twice before refuting others who buy a young whisky, or those who dare to experiment. Neat in a Glencairn, or with ice, with a straw, in a cocktail, with iced tea... who gives a dram as long as it's enjoyed?!

Cheers!

Jim & Laura