A post about work

A few of you have questioned (including myself) why I haven’t dedicated any posts to my work i.e. Daleside brewery. So for these reasons I decided to dedicate this post to Daleside and all the great blokes that make it work. You see Daleside is no mass market commercial operation owned by some holding company, its an Independent small brewer, of classic and often intriguing beers. Based in North Yorkshire we are a 20 barrel plant producing beer for both local cask sales and distribution further afield (sometimes internationally) by various distributors. Our bottled beers are also bottled externally and can be found in various outlets however I have found one of the best places to find Daleside bottled beer to be Booths supermarket, a chain that seems to only be found in the North West of England, however most specialty beer shops, and some wine shops are almost certain to have them.


Previous to my work at Daleside I had sampled Daleside beer very few times since my days as a Biochemistry student in Lancaster (where a trusty Booths supermarket was near by). Of recent times I have got to know the beers of Daleside well indeed, here are some short reviews of the core products:


Daleside Blonde; This is one of the main core products and makes a great summer thirst quencher. The medium to light soft malts are overlaid with lively floral citrus hop notes that linger in the finish. Admirably this one doesn’t seem to wonder into the dry bitter finish (often with lots of resins hanging around) that other golden ales do but sticks to a gentle, rounded balance fitting with the house style. As a bottled beer blonde is almost a completely different product, more refined in character from filtration and an additional lagering step conducted.


Bitter and Special Bitter; Both core products with great drinkability. On cask bitter is mid amber in color and goes down very easily due to its subtle light caramel and gentle hop tones. Special bitter also has great drinkability, but is a little more upfront with more plumpness to the body and well integrated toffee notes. Both of these beers can be used as examples of classic Yorkshire style bitters.


Old Leg over; Another session ale in true Yorkshire style, Leg Over pours a deep amber to brown in color and balances well the interplay between sweet caramelized malt flavors with those of mature fruit from the fermentation. In cask and bottle Leg over is sessionable yet moderately complex.


As you may have guessed Daleside excels in crafting malt balanced beers, and a number of higher gravity beers are also brewed which showcase this ability even further. Ripon Jewel, Morocco ale, Crack Shot and Monkey Wrench, all individual in character and packed with well layered malt structures to be savored. I have discussed this numerous times with head brewer Craig Witty who has crafted many of them himself and has a fondness for his style of brewing. Another novel factor of my work is that I can chat about beer for much greater lengths of time than in previous jobs before people get sick of it. Additionally it is in Yorkshire, which as a superior respect for and output of quality beer. Grand.




Daleside, a brief tour:






Mashing in; hot liqor meets milled malt being fed into the mash tun. After this process is complete the mash is left to stand at it specific temperature to allow starch in the malt to be degraded to more fermentable sugars.

Buckets of aroma hops wait their turn to be thrown into the copper boil.

Cleaning out FV8 (fermentation vessel 8); after the beer has fermented it is transferred to a seperate vessel, leaving loads of yeasty deposits in the Fermenter to be cleaned out.

Clean casks in store, infact every cask pictured was cleaned by myself.

B.R.D Unit (blue roll dispencer); this piece of kit enables staff to quickly and easily dispence blue roll to be used in cleaning duties.

A beer adventure down south.

Casks of various brewers ready to depart for the Harrogate beer festival.

It was only the other week when I overlooked much of the organization for the annual Harrogate beer festival. Coincidentally it was at my work, the Daleside brewery that many of the casks for the festival were collated together to be transported to the event. However the event itself, showcasing many of the greatest beers in Yorkshire, I would be unable to attend due to already scheduled liaisons down south.
However as a substitute for missing out, I would be visiting a brewery that I have admired and longed to visit ever since the very beginnings of my quest for real beer. It has produced many globally recognized classic beers with a certain flamboyancy and fondness of often using multiple English hop varieties to great effect.

As you have probably have guessed, the brewer was Fuller-Smith and Turner, of Chiswick, London. Many years ago I had almost dreamt about such a brewery visit (when I was about 20 I became pretty obsessed with Fullers beers) and the tour was very enjoyable. We were escorted around the brewery buy an old fellow called Jeff. The place seemed huge compared to humble Daleside brewery, with multiple buildings and forklifts roaming about and a sort of old but very well preserved feel about the place. Inside the brewhouse seemed a formidable size, with huge pristine stainless steel vessels of at least 60 barrels capacity and an overall red and green color scheme running throughout. Overall it reminded me a little of Caledonian brewery, back from my old days at Heriot-Watt university… Except alittle more posh.

Behold the mighty gleaming stainless steel copper, a centrepiece at the very heart of Fullers. I never thought I'd see the day.

London Prides well balanced, firm but smooth malty notes latched on to the meaty textures of the Cumberland sausage excellently.

Multiple fermentation vessels.

Me by the copper; note that my current beer diary is too large to fit in coat or trowser pockets like previous volumes. Instead volume 5 has to be carried by hand.

After the tour we got some free samples and headed for the brewery tap for some lunch where I excellently paired Cumberland sausage to a London Pride, and got another try of Chiswick Bitter, one of the finest examples of the style I have ever known. Oddly enough the great Mike Jackson beer hunter himself was also a big Chiswick fan, and until this point I had only got hold of the stuff twice in my entire beer hunting life. It was just as I remembered it, fruty hops to the nose, dry peppery hop resins on the gentle palate, a great beer, and obviously dry hopped.
Following the main event I was also given the chance to dine at one of London’s fine Belgo restaurants, a chain of restaurants specializing in Belgian food with Belgian beer and managed to pick some great beer-food pairings. Check out the beer lists at http://www.belgo-restaurants.co.uk/. In the end I left with a better impression of London that I first thought. I guess I have never really been beer hunting properly in London, and until this point thought it would be just cammed with trendy cocktail bars and clubs. But we saw more decent looking pubs than imagined and not that many trendy bars, which encourages me to visit again some day for a more intensive beer hunt. A grand idea indeed.

Since when did tea become the drink of Britain?

Following the conclusion to Oz and Clarks recent series of Drink of Britain, many people that I have spoken to have been much disappointed that apparently (according to Oz and Clark) the drink of Britain is tea. However this makes no sense as tea is not even grown in Britain, and is consumed traditionally in places all over the world (especially Asia), and to be honest is not actually that popular over here. They might as well have said water was the drink of Britain! To be honest I was quite disappointed, and you could tell in the last two serises Oz was going a bit over the top with vinyards (when hundreds of superb breweries had still not been covered, not to mention specialist beer styles such as Barley wine and Imperial Russian stout). But at least the series didn’t scoop to the same lows as Morrissey Fox did.

A valentines day adventure of beer and food.

It was only previous week when I visited my local the John Bull on an icy cold, blustery night to seek out some quality winter beers. For a Saturday night the place seemed unchanged (despite recent economic conditions) with folk of the local community arriving at a steady pace to enjoy the quality pints on offer. I began as usual reviewing the cask ales available, giving particular praise to Hadrian & Borders new Ouseburn Porter, before finishing with a Westmalle Dubbel. It was by this point that the group of middle aged couples who I was sat next to, had assembled to cheese board with several varieties of cheeses. After chatting to the lady next to me (about beer mainly) I was able to get some cheese samples to see if the Westmalle paired well with any of the cheeses. Luckily enough it seemed to match almost all of the cheeses fairly well. The beer seemed to strip the fat from my palate, almost dissolving it to leave the flavors of both beer and cheese to amalgamate together in a harmonious dance between fruity yeasty phenolics and intense mature cheese flavors. This was more than bliss, and considering Westmalle Dubbel is no lightweight beer at 7%abv, it squared up to anything the cheese board could throw at it, even the blue cheese, which I admit wasn’t the best pairing. Is this inspiration to host my own beer and cheese evening I thought? How many people should I invite and who? What beer with what cheese?

The planning of the event is still pending. But it was only the following weekend that my good lady was preparing a three course meal for us both for valentines day, and with this came the idea to match each course with a complementing beer specially selected. To be honest not all the beers used were 100% adequate for the pairing, but I would class it as a good attempt.

The starter.

Sear scallops with king prawns on a bed of salad and a lemon wedge.

The Beer: Celis White, Belgian wheat beer.


To a certain level this pairing was a shot in the dark as I had never tried Celis white but had an idea that seafood and fish paired well with Belgian wheat beer and this was the only example of the style I had available. Overall the match was quite good with the yeast texture picking up on the scallops a little. The intensity of both beer and food was also well balanced however I felt the beers lively citric flavors and racy acidity really longed for something to dance with or lift from the palate. I would recommend this beer to be paired with something a little more lively, Mexican food maybe?

The Main.

Venison Steak and cherry sauce served with potato wedges, broccoli and asparagus.

The Beer: Badger poachers choice.

This was a bottle I had kept for awhile just waiting for that game dish to go with. It even advises on the bottle to serve with game. As some will know this a very rich malt balanced beer, brewed with liquorish and damson to make it truly individual. The flavors of the beer seemed to purposely mimic that of the cherry sauce and the beer harmonized well with the meat whilst leaving a rugged sweetness and warming alcohols in the mouth. A success!

The Dessert.

Chocolate pear and ginger pudding.

The Beer: Baccus Frambozenbier

This was chosen from the supermarket earlier in the day after the realization that I had no beer in the house that would match this dish adequately. The rational of choosing the raspberry variety over the cherry was simple, raspberry is a more intense fruit so would stand up to the ginger. As things turned out, I was right, and the lively fruits and spritzy carbonation of the beer seemed to marry superbly with chocolate and pear whilst the ginger seemed to ride alongside, bringing that extra complexity to the piece. This was defiantly the best pairing of the evening.

Something for after dinner.

Kasteel Triple.

Was by coincidence a beer very suited for valentines day with bold apricot and pear like sweet malty flavors and generous warming alcohols. This one rounded off a perfectly splendid evening of quality food and company (thanks to the lovely Helen my wife to be) with well chosen quality beers. Cheers.

A long brutal winter

As many UK readers will have realized, this winter has been the longest and coldest for a long time with plenty of snowfall, ice, sleet and blizzards. It is such weather that calls for hard core winter warmer beers such as Scotch ales, Barley wines and various Belgian strong ales. By inconvenience most of the harsh weather has been after New Year, and hence after the bulk of my winter beer supplies had been consumed. Non-the less tonight I shall be visiting the might John Bull, the greatest pub in Alnwick to hunt some winter beers. Landlord Gus usually changes his cask beers to suit the occasion, and does so quite frequently unlike many of the other inferior, pub-co owned Alnwick pubs.

Arguably winter brings some of the most exciting and varied seasonal beers. In fact some breweries even release wheat beers as seasonal (a white colored beer to resemble snow perhaps?) something only done for the summer usually. In fact for my wedding in December I will be having a small but good selection of winter beers available, which reminds me I still have a bottle of Rochefort 10 tucked away in my beer stocks.

A beer to be sadly missed this winter, the mighty Old Rasputin Russian imperial stout is a mighty 9% abv winter warmer from North Coast brewery in California.