– Craft Ale Bar of the Year 2017
Huzzah!
This week we were crowned CRAFT ALE BAR OF THE YEAR at the 2017 Manchester Food and Drink Awards, the 20th year of the awards. Thank you to all that voted and for your patronage this year. Onwards and upwards!
CHEERS!
– IMBC 17 Review by Cameron Steward
IMBC 17 Review
by Cameron Steward
It’s never fun queuing in the rain, but taking “pineapple selfies” whilst awaiting entrance into the North’s (perhaps even the UK’s) most revered beer festival certainly helped pass the time. To those who weren’t social media savvy our group must’ve looked like idiots, but when Beavertown take to the airwaves to plead for certain tropical plants you gotta step up, especially when there’s a mysterious prize involved… turns out that mysterious prize(s) were a can of Lupuloid IPA (6.7%), some Beavertown Extravaganza pins and a poncho. Now that’s a post-Brexit exchange rate I can get behind.
I realise the following sentence may get me blacklisted from all of Manchester’s finest bars and speakeasies, but I’ve definitely got hop haze fatigue. I’m all murked out, y’all! Thankfully, plenty of breweries have many other strings to their bows and served up slices of chop-smacking sours to satisfy my tarty tastes. Fierce Beer’s Very Berry (4.5%) and Brew By Numbers’ Cuvee 2017 (6.2%) were fantastic examples of wild ales at their biting best.
I usually keep my distance from Room 3 – it’s dark and the music is a bit rave-y. It reminds me of Laser Quest birthday parties; being gunned down by the local teenagers who would corner me until I was “back in play”, then shoot me down all over again – live, die, repeat. This year I decided to put my 90s-based traumas aside – plus my brother thought one of the DJs was very attractive… Turned out to be a great decision as Redchurch were delivering some of the best sours of the festival – Dry Hop Sour (5.4%) was ace but On Skins: Cherry (6.5%) was a face-contorting highlight. Suddenly I thought I heard a dance track I knew, and then remembered I’m old and boring so moved on to a different room.
Buxton brought along their soft serve machine, which although a bit gimmick-y, totally elevated their already great Original Blueberry Slab Cake (7%) to an astral plane. I even went a bit crazy and got soft serve Trolltunga (6.3%), their gooseberry sour IPA. Sacrilege, I hear you cry! Judge not, that ye be not judged… Or something to that affect, I would reply.
Making a lunch decision is always the hardest part of IMBC, and a last minute choice to get a Dirty Burger from Patty Smith’s turned out to be an excellent one, especially when paired with Wild Beer’s Wild Goose Chase (4.5%). Boom! Dessert was a Pecan Slab from the ever-amazing In Truffles We Trust, washed down with the frankly insane BA Imperial Chocolate Stout, Speyside Cacao (12.5%) by Dugges and Stillwater Artisanal.
Other beers were drank but haven’t been listed because they weren’t as good as the aforementioned (plus you’d get a bit bored reading about them) but the hit rate, as ever, was ridiculously high. And that also makes Indy Man a 6 for 6. Yep, 6 mother-flipping years and consistently the best thing that happens in my otherwise meaningless existence. Roll on 2018!!
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– Now open from midday every day!
Yes yes y’all! As of Friday 4th August 2017 Port Street Beer House will be open 7 days a week from MIDDAY. Come visit us for a liquid lunch or pick up a pie or a scotch egg…or all of that. New times…
WEEKDAYS
Midday-Midnight
SATURDAY
Midday-1am
SUNDAY
Midday-Midnight
Ta-da!
– Verdant Tap Takeover review by Cameron Steward
On Wednesday 17th May 2017 we held a Verdant tap takeover at Port Street. We asked Cameron Steward to come down and taste his way through the hits. Here are Cameron’s words and photographs…
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One of the most striking articles should you choose to visit the Verdant Brewing website is a blog post entitled ‘High Level Sink’. The declaration from January 2017 begins, “Today was a bad day” and outlines how Verdant had to dispose of a staggering 800 litres of their Pale Ale High Level Kink (4.8%), due to contamination issues.
You may think this an odd confession; why announce such a colossal failure? What good can come from planting that seed of doubt regarding the level of professionalism in such a highly competitive field? On the other hand, it’s refreshing to acknowledge such a calamity and certainly reassuring to see that Verdant demand only the highest quality, ensuring the product they put out is their best.
Sadly HLK isn’t present at the Port Street Beer House tap takeover, but their Pale army is solidly represented with Light Bulb (4.5%), Headband (5.5%) and the brilliantly titled Roy, I Want A Hilux (5.5%). They’re reassuringly hazy, bitter and very fruity – just what you’d expect from a brewery whose manifesto is a hop-forward reaction to a lack of juicy, bitter bombs from this side of the pond. It’s evident Verdant are heavily inspired by the New England IPAs and Pales, which have gained more mainstream recognition in the UK over the past couple of years. They cite Treehouse, Trillium, Monkish and Hill Farmstead as influences and this comes across with crystal clear clarity (although in reality, they’re pretty murk-tastic) in their IPAs, Putty (8%) and Even Sharks Need Water (6.5%).
Both these beers are showcased at the takeover and Sharks is a damn-near perfect example of a smash-able, juice-splosion IPA. It’s packed with tropical lushness and plenty of bitterness. That NE profile is equally palpable from the soft mouthfeel that head brewer James clarifies “comes from wanting to meld yeast, malt and water profiles to enhance the hop experience”. It’s also worth mentioning that these beers pair fantastically with the sticky and sweet Pork Bao buns provided by the master chefs at Common Bar.
It’s not hard to tell that these guys have worked hard, each of the offerings at the takeover represents the tastes and demands of Verdant’s tireless brewers – there are just the 3 of them. This didn’t happen overnight of course, they began piloting brews in 2013 before moving to a 1bbl kit in a shipping container in 2014. “Test, assess, change and test again” James tells me and by August 2015 the beers were ready for public consumption. A mere 10 months later they moved to their current premises in Falmouth, Cornwall, equipped with a 10bbl kit that went live in September 2016. From there on it’s all been a haze (pun intended), with popularity seeing Verdant become increasingly more visible in the north of England, having already infiltrated the South West, Northern Ireland and London. Their next target, Scotland, is so direct in their crosshairs that the day after their Port Street takeover, they’re invading one of Edinburgh’s finest, The Hanging Bat, to bring the hop pain.
Future aspirations include obtaining their own canning line and opening their tap house for summer sessions. They also hope to extend their Christmas card list with a range of forthcoming collaborations that may be classified “top secret” but definitely include Manchester’s own Cloudwater, which is definitely worth getting excited about.
It’s not hard to see why Verdant have grown so exponentially; they’re fun and personable gents who offer time to answer my questions and it’s clear they’re brewing beers they crave, which happens to coincide with a reinvigorated interest in the modern IPA – see Hop City for further evidence. Their pump clips and cans glow as vibrantly on bars and shelves as the contents do in the glass, and if they’re not happy with those beers being saturated with “lush, juicy and moist hop flavours”, then they’ll reassess and try again.