Smokefest @ Torrside Brewery

There is a growing trend of themed festivals popping up all over the country, with Hop City and Dark City hosted by Northern Monk (Leeds) celebrating hoppy and dark beers (respectively, obvs) and Sesh Fest at Magic Rock (Hudds). These festivals are a showcase of what the majority of modern beer drinkers like to hype over and while these are more obvious in terms of their appeal, more niche fests still run and function incredibly well albeit a little more under the radar. Like the one we help to organise through our day jobs, Funk Fest at Abbeydale Brewery (Sheffield) celebrating mixed fermentation, and the excellent Cask Fest at Affinity Brew Co (London) celebrating secondary fermented ales served without extraneous gas added. Then along come Torrside to showcase arguably the most controversial flavour in beer... Smoke.

You have probably been living under a rock if you don't already know that we are BIG TORRSIDE FANS. Having loved them from their humble beginnings (a little more on how we got to know them here) to having the opportunity to brew with them earlier this year, they are a fantastic bunch who make a complete roster of outstanding beers.

As we see it, their success has largely come from two ends of the beer world - well hopped light pale ales, that pack flavour and have great condition on a bar. And on the other end of the beer spectrum is what really sets them apart as one our favourite breweries and a cut above many other smaller breweries - the "Monsters". These big parti-gyled* beers pack the kind of welly that you wouldn't expect a brewery of Torrside's size to churn out other than for the occasional anniversary beer, but with a total of 37 listed on Untappd, they aren't mucking around.

Torrside's propensity for smoke and ability in using smoked malts in their beers is absolutely second to none in England at the moment, using beechwood, oak smoke and peated malts, they push all aspects of what smoke can do. Beechwood smoke being generally synonymous with the Rauchbier of Bamberg, featuring a sweet smooth smoke that works incredibly well with toasted malts. Oak smoking, which is traditionally used to dry wheat (rather than barley) showcases loads of vanilins, and is less subtle. Then peat, which the household consensus is our favorite wood for smoked liquids, but not quite so for food**. We were honoured enough to make our very own peaty Monster earlier this year, Power Stance, a parti-gyled peated ginger barley wine coming in at 12.5%, a surprisingly subtle balance of fresh, aromatic spice and sweet, almost saltiness, all dug from the earth.

Anyway. Onto the festival! The grey November day came, as did a pair of trains that journeyed us safely to our destination of New Mills (New Town rather than our usual Central***), and the unit that Torrside share with a private Marina, it's basically Monte Carlo for central Derbyshire. In the brewery we found a huuuuge selection of beers all featuring one or more of the aforementioned smokes, plus a sea of friendly faces. Smoke might be a divisive flavour in beer but it sure brought all of us together.

We opened with two Torrside beers - Hopfenrauch (Jim), a well balanced smoked bitter with a hop zest cutting through, and Sto Lat (Laura) a Grodziskie - a Polish style of light low ABV lager, featuring oak smoke that adds a layer of complexity to this eminently sessionable beer. These first beers, along with our seconds, were included in the entrance price, as was the glass to take away. The £12 even stretched to a portion of Pie***.14, with additional food (including smoked ham and a wide variety of smoked cheeses including a blue version which Laura hasn't stopped thinking about since) all being reasonably priced. Overall the festival certainly more than covered our expectation of what our ticket price offered. We even got a little goodie bag to take home, the My Little Pony chocolate coins were excellent Train Strike Return Journey sustenance.

Amongst the guest beers on offer were featured Ashover (another local favourite of ours), De Molen and Kees, but as soon as Jim saw the beer list a couple of weeks before, there were two at the top of his hit list from Yeastie Boys and Schlenkerla which feature as regularly in his drinking habits as possible but never before on draught. Rex Attitude and Helles couldn't be any further from each other, one 100% peated malt, the other no smoked malt whatsover (but made in a sufficiently smoky atmosphere to still impart oodles of flavour). We've said in the past that Rex Attitude is one of the most deliciously obnoxious beers we've had, tasting like lightly hopped Laphroaig wash wrapped up in a TCP shot, it's everything that isn't subtle, like drinking a Viking burial. Bury Jim in Rex. Schlenkerla Helles by contrast is made of 100% unsmoked pilsner malt, but with a soft vanilla cigar sweetness, that comes from the lingering smoked malt. If like Schlenkerla you make a lot of rauch it seems you only make rauch... it clings to the mill, the auger, the mashtun and beyond.

From this we obviously moved on to drink some Monsters. One of our number came across with half a pint of cask and a glint in their eye, clutching a dark brown, bordering on black cask beer. With a pale krausen and a warming waft of smoke the Rauchwine became introduced to our table far too soon (or not soon enough?!), the rest of us sat in envy after a nose and a wet and the next drinks were decided instantly. We think we've found our cask beer of the year a couple of months early. The Dogs of War series were also tasting absolutely incredible and of course we had to sample our Power Stance collab, which was delicious if we do say so ourselves.

Sat in the centre of the brewery surrounded by good friends, with a phenomenal beer range, some delicious food to accompany, relaxed and surrounded by dogs, this was really what festivals should be about. Smokefest had all of this in absolute spades and we left feeling all warm and fuzzy and not just because of all the imperial strength smoked beers we'd consumed. We definitely hope that Smokefest will become an annual fixture, but in the meantime the pub beckons... tis the season, an all that.

Cheers!

Jim & Laura

* splitting strong, first runnings from the mash to create stronger fermentable wort
** it's cherry, in case you were wondering
*** Train Strikes
***.14 Rauchwine and steak flavour! (It's a Pi joke).

Because it wouldn't be a proper post about how much we love Torrside without some Kami love...

Arran Whisky Tasting at The Rutland Arms

It was the height of the summer heatwave when the sweltering upstairs room of the Rutland Arms played host to David from the Isle of Arran Distillery and Sam from Indie Brands, a distributor focusing on a portfolio of spirits and cocktail producers from around the world, in an evening organised by our favourite spirits shop Starmore Boss.

We opened with the flagship release, the Arran 10 year old, while we were shown a short video about the distillery, based near the village of Lochranza on the north tip of  the Isle of Arran (We visited in 2015). The whisky itself has a smooth sweetness with heaps of vanilla and a little touch of white chocolate, that continues across the palate with apples and custard. The bourbon influence is massive, and we all agreed this was a great way to open the evening and an excellent choice for those not already familiar with the distillery to get a clear idea of its character from the off.

The next dram was a big step in age to the 18 year old release, which is delightfully refined. Finished in sherry casks to help round the flavours and add a wonderful punch of sticky dried fruits, raisins, prunes and a little cherry, bolstering the overall profile which holds a delicious dark chocolate character. The whole thing comes together in a way very much reminiscent of Rocky Road.

The brand new release Brodick Bay followed, the oldest of the evening at 20 years old and one of the most accomplished. The distillery itself being only 23 years old, to have the quality of spirit to release a drink as defined as this one is a monumental feat. This particular release is limited to 9000 bottles and bottled at cask strength of 49.8%. It has been aged for 8 years in ex-bourbon Buffalo Trace casks and sherry hogsheads before being blended and finished in Oloroso sherry casks. The palate holds plenty of dry sherry, but still loads of dried stone fruits, a little touch of spice and perhaps a little cinnamon. The wood character is clear and bold and really transfers a lot of the quality of the wood into the enjoyment of the spirit.

The Amarone is a whisky we've drunk before in the distillery, so there are more detailled notes here. It was interesting to drink this in such a different context, from the cooling winds of the Irish Sea to the sticky stillness of summer time UK '18. This was cleverly paired with a chunk of dark chocolate also made on Arran. The addition of a rich, bitter flavour really opened up some of the finer points of the dram and enhanced the sweeter underrepresented aspects of the whisky, simply wonderful.

The final whisky of the night was Machrie Moor, a NAS peated whisky, that is perfect for those unsure of their peat reek limits - soft and rounded with just a little sweetness, not too much in the way of high alcohols, merely a warmth that comes from its slightly younger age. A very accessible dram.

What really excites us about Arran is the ongoing construction of their second distillery, in which they will focus on producing only peated malt throughout. Although it's going to be a few years in the making, it's definitely one we'll be keeping an eye on and we're looking forward to following their progress.

A big thanks to the Arran team for a well curated selection of drams, to Jeff from Starmore Boss for organising the evening and inviting us along, and to the Rutland for always being top notch hosts.

Slainte!

Fine Pups of Fyne Fest

With one of the most relaxed beer festivals we've ever been to over, and many people already (and justifiably) singing its praises, it's definitely easy to say that Fyne Fest surpasses most of the expectations of a great festival. Calm, well organised, a wonderful mix of clientele (from the most ardent RateBeer ticker to people who just want a pint of Jarl), family friendly, a beer list to quench the most demanding of thirsts, bands to keep you dancing to the early hours, and all in THE most beautiful of settings.

Also, there were dogs. Lots and lots of dogs. Here are a few of our favourite woofers...

This year was our first trip, but it certainly won't be the last.

Thank you to Iain and the entire Fyne Ales team for an amazing weekend, and to all the campers in "The Village" for making us feel so welcome. We can't wait for next year!

Connoisseurs Choice from Gordon & MacPhail

Tonight we participated in a Tweet Tasting hosted by The Whisky Wire, introducing us to the new look Connoisseurs Choice range of whiskies from Gordon & MacPhail. The redesign has come about as part of their celebrations for the fiftieth anniversary of the range, and aims to highlight the provenance of the whisky and the commitment to the art of Scotch whisky maturation. Each and every whisky in the range is non-chill filtered and bottled at natural colour. Here's what we thought of these unique drams...

Pulteney 1998, 46.0% ABV.
N: Grassy, gentle hay and a soft apple brandy sweetness. A dusting of nutmeg and raw brown cane sugar to finish off. After a few minutes, a little salination develops along with a rounding off of the spice and fruit that was present before. A little touch of alcohol spice comes even later, carrying with it a rhubarb-esque tartness.
P: Smooth, with very little in the way of oaky tannins but LOADS of vanilla sugariness. Apple pie, but served with a pineapple coulis drizzled atop in lieu of custard. More spice creeps on in as the dram opens up. A treacly nature adds to the finish.

Craigellachie 1991, 56.5% ABV.
N: Tart, tannic wood character, reminiscent of pickled walnuts. There's loads of dried mineraliness, a little chalk, and then pervasive citric notes - somewhere in between overripe lemons and Haribo Tangfastics.
P: POW! You can certainly feel the hit of that cask strength. The mineral presence is definitely still apparent, accompanied by lemon verbena and a touch of paprika. Adding a splash of water is like slapping your grandad's armchair - musk, a little book dust, and just a wee touch of secret late night cigar.

Highland Park 2004, 60.0% ABV.
N: Dank red berries and juniper with a saline edge - like walking through the hedgerows on a windy cliff top on the North Yorkshire coast. In balance with this, there's caramelised bananas doused in a salted miso butter sauce. Invitingly multi-layered.
P: Like licking a freshly sanded piece of oak. A little smoke fills the air, a chilli is simmering on the stove; cinder toffee meets cayenne pepper. For us, the ABV is not particularly pronounced, especially when considered in comparison to the previous dram. Smooth and sweet palatability.

Clynelish 2005, 56.1% ABV.
N: Earthy, dry saltiness. A stroll through a late evening herb garden, mint and lavender, the last smouldering vestiges of a forgotten barbeque.
P:Dates, salted lemons, warming spice - cardamom and cinnamon - pomegranate seeds and just a suggestion of herbal freshness to finish. It's basically the startings of a really tasty tagine. Deliciously complex and very well balanced. We approve.

Caol Ila Hermitage Wood Finish 2004, 45.0% ABV.
N: A platter of kippers, salted meats, lemon and caper butter, eaten whilst overlooking the Mediterranean. A few of our fellow tasters picked up on a prawn cocktail element - upon revisiting we could definitely get notes of the dust you find at the bottom of a packet of Skips!
P: Robust umami character - cooking the day's catch over a driftwood fire in a seaweed-ridden grotto. Bolder than your typical Caol Ila release and a complex surprise.

Big thanks to Steve at the Whisky Wire, and Stephen Rankin and the team at Gordon & MacPhail, for inviting us to participate in this evening of delectable dramming.

Cheers!

Jim & Laura

Flavourly: Craft Beer Discovery Club

Last month we were introduced to Flavourly, an online shop specialising predominantly in beer and gin (although they do whisky, wine, and other spirits too!). As well as providing an online bottleshop, Flavourly have also established their Craft Beer Discovery Club, a subscription service which delivers a personalised range of ten curated beers each month. 

Our box contained exclusively beers from Fourpure Brewing Co, a brewery we're familiar with and have enjoyed visiting on the Bermondsey Beer Mile in the past. The box included some classic favourites but also some totally new beers including the Easy Peeler Citrus Session IPA, a recent addition to their core range based on a lower ABV version of their popular IPA, Juicebox. The box also contained 3 lagers, which is a style we wouldn't usually go for in a shop or bar, but it was a nice change to have the opportunity to try something different.

We're not going to go into our tasting notes for all of these, but highlights for us were the vibrantly tropical Shape Shifter IPA (5.9%), the crisp and quaffable Indy Lager (4.4% and great alongside a pizza), and the well-balanced and robust Beartooth American Brown (5.3%).

Also included within our box was the Flavourly Magazine, which we felt was a great touch. Inside were approachable tasting notes for each featured beer - we really liked the inclusion of recommended serving temperatures. There was also an in-depth article on the featured brewery which helped bring the beers in our box to life, alongside a piece on the four main beer ingredients, which was eminently readable - good for newcomers to craft beer as well as retaining relevance and interest for more experienced "beer geeks", a balance that can often be difficult to achieve.

Other breweries were in the magazine so we assume that depending on your personal preferences (which it looks like you can easily change at any time) you may receive a different selection - for example, there were no dark beers in our box, so stout fans may have been a little disappointed, but the customisable elements of the club ensures that nobody goes thirsty!

The second half of the magazine was dedicated to the gin box which looks great too - we particularly liked that each gin from the box had a suggested cocktail to try, as well as insights into the people behind the gin in more extensive interviews. Laura is a huge gin enthusiast as well as beer lover, and all three of the featured gins were totally new to her, so that's three more to pop on the "to try" list!

Overall, we were really impressed with our first experience of Flavourly - you could say it's taking a bit of a gamble sending out a beer "discovery" box to two people who drink a lot of beer and are well integrated into the beer industry, but we were really pleasantly surprised by the selection included (both in the box we received, and in the wider selection sent out that the magazine showed was available). The customer service was helpful too and the magazine was a genuinely good read.

Cheers!

Jim & Laura

Disclaimer: We were sent the Craft Beer Discovery Club box free of charge from Flavourly. However this has not influenced our opinions, which are all our own.

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