Last week saw lots of thirsty beer lovers descend on Staveley in Cumbria for the latest instalment in the Hawkshead Beer Festival. We arrived early afternoon on the Thursday after a quick trip round Ambleside and setting up camp at the excellent Pound Farm Campsite just over 2 miles from the Brewery in a little village called [...]
View Post Beer Festival, cumbrian ale, cumbrian beer, northern beer
Hawkshead Brewery are one of my favourite breweries in not just the lakes but the whole wide world. Hawkshead Brewery was founded in 2002 in a barn at Esthwaite Water, using a second hand 7 barrel plant and over the last few years they have gone from strength to strength, firstly moving across Lake Windemere to [...]
View Post bottled beer, cask ale, cask beer, cumbrian ale, cumbrian beer, kegged beerLast week saw the latest get together of the Cumbrian Beer Appreciation Group (CBAG), after seeing tweets from previous events I’d quite fancied going to one but had never manged to time my holidays with the meals, this time however my luck was in and we were planning on heading to the Lake District when [...]
View Post beer and food, bottled beer, cumbrian beer, hardknott, Hardknott breweryA couple of weeks ago HardknottDave asked me if i wanted to test his soon to be launched online shop, happy to help a mate and with the chance to order a pre release version of his newest bottled beer, I logged on and got stuck in. Not long after my paypal receipt had arrived [...]
View Post Bottle conditioned beer, bottled beer, cumbria, cumbrian beer, hardknott, real aleI first heard about Coniston IPA when Ian mentioned it in his Meet the Brewer and from his tweets on twitter I knew I had to try some. So on a camping trip a couple of weeks ago we decided to have a beery night in Coniston town I popped into the Black Bull for [...]
View Post bottled beer, cask ale, cask beer, cumbria, cumbrian beer, lake district, lakeland ales, lakeland beerAfter an excellent day in Chester the plans for the next couple of days included more walking that beer but that’s not to say it didn’t include a fair bit of beer. You can read about the walking here or have a nose at my photos here, so I thought I’d do a quick round [...]
View Post beer and walking, cask ale, cask beer, cumbrian beer, welsh beerThis week’s Meet The Brewer comes from a little closer to home, with Ian from Coniston Brewery in the lovely Lake District, taking time out from his busy schedule to fill us in about the brewery. If you are ever in the area it’s definitely worth a visit but best left until after you’ve climbed Coniston Old [...]
View Post bottled beer, cask beer, cumbrian beer, kegged beer, lakeland beer, Meet The BrewerBefore Christmas the very kind guys over at Stringers Beer sent me a couple of bottles of their ales to try, The first of which was Stringers IPA. The first thing that impressed me was the branding, it’s really bold and striking, it’s also really clean and simple, so much so it’s sat on the [...]
View Post amarillo, cumbria, cumbrian beer, English IPA, IPA, lakeland beerThis weeks Meet The Brewer comes from Jon over at Stringers Beer (or Stringers – no apostrophe), who are based over in beautiful Cumbria and make some cracking beers. They have some great branding and their casks are bright yellow and purple so what’s not to like! What is your brewery capacity? A minuscule 11 [...]
View Post bottled beer, cask beer, cumbrian beer, lake district, lakeland ales, Meet The BrewerAn 8% beer from Cumbria – yup you read that right, I know it’s quite a rarity for a high ABV beer to come out of Cumbria with only a few brave people like Hardknott Dave, Strigers Beer and the odd special from Keswick brewing anything other than ~4% “sesison beer”. Croglin Vampire from Cumbrian [...]
View Post bottled beer, cumbrian beer, doppelbock