AS THE cream of our independent breweries prepare to sign off 2016 with Manchester Brewery Taps Weekend and Seven Bro7hers launches its eagerly anticipated bar in Ancoats, it’s time to look ahead to a Hoppy New Year.
The idea is that people can come here and get a beer that you wouldn’t normally find in bottles or cans and take home a few pints of it
Get the taste for a beer-driven 2017 by sampling the finest brews from Cloudwater, Track, Cave Direct, Beer Nouveau and Manchester Brewing Company. All within a ten minute totter of each other behind Piccadilly Station and all open at varying times from Fri 16 Dec to Sun 18 Dec.
Factor in the increasingly jolly GRUB Food Fair at Alphabet Brewing Co – where a range of their ales will flow freely (alongside the high octane gluhwein Feuerzangenbowle) to wash down parmos from ParmStar and further food offerings from The Amazing Mr Meatball, Yakumama, Flavors of Africa and The Biscuit Tin – and Christmas really has come early for beer lovers.
Take some frothy nectar home too by grabbing a Growler at Beer Merchants, Alphabet’s near neighbours at 102 North Western Street. Will Evans, who is running the Growler Shop at this beer distribution outlet is pinning great hopes on a state of the art carry-out device.
Basically you fill an air-tight heavy jug, made out of glass, ceramic or stainless steel with keg beer (it doesn’t work with cask). The filler first floods the empty container with carbon dioxide, creating a pressurised environment free of oxygen. The beer is then transferred from the keg into the jug, which slowly displaces the carbon dioxide. The pressure in the flagon is kept in balance, so the flagon fills without foaming. Once the cap is on the beer remains inert and will keep fresh for up to 60 days.
Grab 'em by the GrowlerThey use the same system at Heaton Hops, Manchester Food and Drink Awards 2016 'Craft Ale Bar of the Year', the vessels are ‘flagons’.
Beer Merchants go all heritage by calling them ‘Growlers’, a reference to the galvanised pails used to carry beer home fresh from the pub in the late 1800s and early 1900s. When the beer sloshed around the pail, it created a rumbling sound as the CO2 escaped through the lid, hence the term "growler" was coined.
Enough history. As we ferried home four pints of inert Wild Beer Trendy Juice (£4 a pint in the warehouse bar, £15 a Growler) it felt like the future.
Will told us: “The idea is that people can come here and get a beer that you wouldn’t normally find in bottles or cans and take home a few pints of it. We’re committed to helping people drink better beer and we hope to see a time soon when it becomes normal practice for people to pop into their local bar with a few empty growlers at a time. The great thing about it is that there is zero waste as the growler gets washed and re-used every time”.
The excellent Beehive Food had a stall at the first of Beer Merchants’ regular Saturday open to the public sessions (12pm-7pm) and in the New Year Will plans to host an array of small food producers.
Big beer dates to stick in your diary:
Manchester Beer & Cider Festival (January 19-21) Manchester Central, Windmill St, M2 3GX.
The North’s biggest cask ale festival is back with a strong Manchester heritage theme and 700 beers and ciders from the UK and around the world. For full details and tickets visit here. For special, ticketed events follow this link.
Manchester Beer Week (June 23-July 2) citywide.
Last year’s inaugural multi-venue event, organised by beer blogger Connor Murphy, was a huge success, so no surprise to see it return. For emerging details of the programme follow @mcrbeerweek.
There’s much activity among the arches further along the ‘Beer Mile’. At 98 North Western Street Dan Rogers has set up Dan’s Brewery after learning the ropes at Magic Rock, Burning Sky and our own Marble, run by his mum, Jan. His IPA and, in particular, his beautifully balanced, floral Pale Ale mark the arrival of a real talent. You can taste them at Knott Bar on Deansgate.
Fellow newcomers Origami Brewing Company, with brewer Erin Guy once of Bootleg, have been brewing inside Beer Nouveau at 75 North Western Street, using their own kit. At 103 Temperance Street, look out early spring for the arrival of Vinyl Valley, a specialist ‘accessible’ brett (sour beer) brewery. It’s the pet project of Alex Parkinson, once brewer at Bolton’s Drink Up and currently beer sommelier at newly arrived Indian veggie/craft beer eaterie Bundobust in Piccadilly.
Bundobust, an offshoot of the Leeds original, promises a rotating roster of Manchester cask beers – Marble Pint and Manchester Bitter at the launch, where they were offering version ten of Cloudwater’s cult 9 per cent DIPA at a reasonable £3.50 a half. Note you have to buy food to drink there.
Of course, Manchester brewing is not just confined to this set of arches. Out in Tameside Epicurus have taken over the Hornbeam Denton site, retaining flagship ales Top Hops and the fruit infused Orange Blossom, while extending the range; in Hyde Four Kings is a new operation, its first two beers an IPA and a bitter, both using English hops, both 4%. Their seasonal shaggy dog back story on their website involve a Fourth King called ‘Hopsenmalt'.
Four Kings is a new venture in Hyde
Mighty Medicine has a pirate fixationThis kind of drollery must be catching. Out in Whitworth, near Rochdale, the jolly website belonging to another newcomer, Mighty Medicine Brewing Co, has a pirate fixation. “Long before The Great American Craft Beer Revolution and even before the advent of India Pale Ales of the 1800’s Pirates Ruled The Seas… An intended Pirate had to drink a mug full of Ale BOTTOMS UP, hence the saying!”
We dropped in on the spanking new operation on an industrial estate to find the cosiest little unpiratical tap, serving signature beer Madchester Cream and other cask brews featuring toffee or bananas – none of which really shivered our timbers, but it’s early days. There is a dynamism here to succeed in a crowded, competitive market (recent brewery closures have included Middleton’s Wilson Potter and the brilliant Quantum from Stockport).
My New Year resolution is to try to roadtest all the new brews on your behalf and report back. Wish me luck.
Need a perfect Christmas present for the pub lover in your life?
The Pub by Pete Brown (Penguin £22.50, much cheaper on Amazon).
The scope of this beautifully illustrated book is captured in its subtitle: “A Cultural Institution – from Country Inns to Craft Beer Bars and Corner Locals”. Its full of diverse discoveries, even for an inveterate hostelry hound like me. From Beerwolf Books in Falmouth, Cornwall, a “bookshop with an arty beatnik sensibility in a pub with leaning to craft beer” to The Pig’s Nose Inn at East Prowle, Devon, a pub “so good I’m reluctant to tell you where it is or how to get there”. Why’s that? You’ll have to buy the book to find out – I’m definitely going there! Nearer home good to see our own Briton’s Protection getting an admiring profile too.
Follow Neil's beer escapades @AntonEgoManc
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