– Celt Experience Launch / Thursday 30th 2014 – 7pm
Head brewer and beer sommelier Tom Newmanto introduce a beer from The Celt Imperial Ogham range and a brand new Celt core beer. A range of other Celt products will be available for sampling during the evening plus chatter about beer science, extreme recipes and food ties.
/ Info about The Celt Experience
Tom came from a home-brewing background from an age that was a bit naughty and gave up his day job 10 years ago to take brewing seriously… well, as serious as Tom gets anyway. Starting with the Newman’s brand from his dad’s garage, Tom learnt quickly by trial and error and had some good fortune along the way, like buying up the majority of the sadly defunct Smile’s kit in Bristol and soon after returned to his roots by registering the Celt Experience name and opening the existing brewery in Caerphilly.
Deciding to focus on the Celt brand, and letting Newman’s go quietly into the night, he launch Celt Golden Age, Bronze and Bleddyn – originally all organic. But, in the ever expanding craft beer landscape, Newman found himself hampered by this stricture and decided to start experimenting with all kinds of malts and hops in 2011, dropping the organic mantra, and the brewery has gone from strength-to-strength ever since, leading to to their incredible achievement at this years SIBA Wales & West event!
In 2012 Tom developed the on-going Shapeshifter series of collaboration brews, with such names as Boxing Cat Brewery from Shanghai, Brasserie St Germain from France Tap East from London and beer writer & sommALEier Melissa Cole to create exciting and innovative American, Belgian and German beers with a twist. Not content with that area of innovation, in 2013, it was time for the Celt Ogham series to be added to the successful core range; the high ABV beers, varying between 8.5% and 10.5% were an instant success.
For 2014, Celt are in the process of building a ‘surreal’ bowling centre called ‘Craft Bowl’ in the middle of their brewery and a Sour brewery called ‘CellRebirth’ next door! CellRebirth is a leftfield project developed between tom, Melissa Cole and Chris Giles. It basically is an outdoor Welsh lab for developing different indigenous Welsh microorganisms to create exciting flavours and styles. The brewers and guests use age-old international beer styles with a new twist.
Put simply, The Celt Experience is an open adventure into the world of beer drinking and pagan free living… Join us why don’t you? It’ll be a tasty ride.
“For me breweries like The Celt Experience sum up the way the craft brewing movement is, and should be, heading. Innovation through dedication to quality and growing attention for what it brews, not what it shouts” – Melissa Cole
Follow them on twitter @celtbeers
http://celtexperience.com/
– Meet The Brewer with Burning Sky / Monday 27th January 2014
5.30pm doors – event starts at 6.15pm
SOLD OUT
Our first Meet the Brewer of 2014 is a pretty good way to start the year. Burning Sky was formed in the autumn of 2013 by a well-known face on the UK brewing scene, Mark Tranter, who earlier in the year left the mighty Dark Star brewery that he co-founded, under the Evening Star pub in Brighton, in 1996.
His reason for leaving? He essentially wanted to ‘do something smaller’. From this humble thought, an old stable on the country estate of Firle upon which Mark also lives were secured and in late September, the first brews were being produced.
And what brews they are. We’re all aware that Mark knows a thing or two when it comes to brewing, but even the seasoned pros here at Port Street were blown away by the quality of beers that Mark and Tom (Dobson, home brewer extraordinaire) are already putting out. The Saison à la Provision, as I’ve told anyone who’ll listen, is simply one of the best saisons I’ve ever drank. They brew two pale ales, the 3.5% Plateau, whose huge hop flavour belies its low strength and Aurora, a stronger brew at 5.6% which is stunningly bitter and absolutely delicious. The ‘biggest’ beer is Devils Rest, a beautifully balanced full strength IPA at 7%. Seasonal 4.5% saisons will also be released. We’ve already had the Automne, with rosehips, and hope to get the L’Hiver, infused with Hawthorn leaves and berries. Add to all of these some cunning use of barrel aging, and you have one of the most exciting breweries in the country.
It’s going to be ace. We can’t wait.
www.burningskybeer.com
@burningskybeer
Words by Jamie Hancock (@Not_that_Jamie)
– New Years Eve 2013 at Port Street Beer House
Sick of fighting to get a table on New Years Eve? Always stuck for an idea how to spend ‘the most anticipated night of the year’? We may have the answer!
The upstairs saloon of Port Street Beer House will be available for table reservations on NYE. Tables will be booked out for a minimum of 4 people and bookings will be reserved with a £10 deposit per person. This deposit will be returned to you on the night in the form of a bar tab. For example, if you book a table for 4 people, you’ll need to leave £40 deposit but on the night you’ll have a £40 bar tab set up waiting for you.
We have a limited number of tables so put in a booking request and providing we can accommodate your group we’ll be in touch to arrange the deposit.
In addition to the table booking you can also pre book a special bottle or two for your group or a delicious Great North Pie, peas and gravy which will be brought to you at your table.
The downstairs bar at Port Street will be open as usual all night so you can choose whether to mingle around or hang out with your group upstairs. Service will be until 1am (ish).
NYE at PSBH / 4pm until 1am (ish)
– Table reservation / £10 per person (redeemable bar tab)
– Great North Pie, peas and gravy available to pre order alongside special NYE beers
Please email jamie@aplacecalledcommon.co.uk with your name, contact number and how many people you would like to book for.
We will get back to ASAP with a booking form.
– Old and Dark Festival 2013 / Tuesday 3rd December – Sunday 22nd December
It’s that wonderful time of year once again! Yes it is cold…and arguably miserable. True it is getting dark so early that it feels like there’s barely any point getting out of bed. Indeed it could be said a commercial Christmas is being stuffed into our brains at every opportunity…
However! This means it is the perfect time to comfort ourselves with some Old, Dark and generally delicious beers! As ever we have tried our hardest and harassed multiple excellent brewers into providing us with an array of their darkest and most delightful beers. These brewers include Moor, Brewfist, Kernel, Magic Rock, Fyne, Thornbridge, Summer Wine, Fyne, Ashover, Quantum, Black Jack, Brewdog, Hopcraft, Kirkstall, Black Edge and others.
Some are old favourites, whilst others are new and exciting ones to try for the first time. You’ll have to come in to find out which though and yes those who’re not dark beer appreciators we’ll keep a token offering to placate you.
We hope this will offset the trauma of this challenging month…and are pretty confident it will-it worked last year anyway!