The fruits of my labour

Brewing beer is big business; distribution is bigger still. There are more and more pubs run by the same big breweries; Wetherspoon’s remodels ailing buildings from banks to theatres and smears them with microwavable curry. Butler & Smith disguise themselves in a chain of drinking holes from the student Scream pubs to 'buy a bottle of vinegar disguised as wine for a fiver' pubs through to All Bar One. You wouldn’t even know they were B & S (it’s not even on the small print of some menus). Then, the other end of the brewery cunning spectrum is Sam Smith’s with its 160 pubs serving its own brand Ale, Lager and Spirits.

I like pubs, I have loved working with them, drinking in them and learning about the produce behind their heavenly oak portals. (A pub with a good bit of timber is preferable, always.) I revel in discovering new ones, and when visiting a new city, they are always a preference. York was the new city this time round, and what a place for the hallowed portals of draft and drizzle. Adding to the Yorkshire tradition of ale drinking, and proud pubbing (Sam Smiths is a Yorkshire brewery) is the twelve year old ale brewer, York Brewery, and tagged York’s One and Only. The founders evidently have a first-rate idea of the Trades Description Act. The brewery is home to a twenty barrel brew, and nine different ales, five of which are brewed on cycle all year round and with four guests. I don’t drink ale. I drink lager -- starting on Fosters when I was eighteen and worked in my local with an alcoholic Savoy trained chef for a boss. Fosters was the lager of local choice, and I got rather drunk on three pints of 1664, so I drunk the pretend Aussie pizzle.

York Brewery, after a morning of variously arranged stuffed dogs (and cats) in exhibitions at York Museum, was a refreshing little escape from pubs in town, and, much over the counter draft ale. Centurion’s Ghost, a dark bitter with the palate of a rich, round merlot and an after taste of sour cream was at the brewery clear, rich and fresh. At the Golden Fleece, the most haunted pub in town, it was a thick, opaque glass of chalk. Needless to say, I didn’t finish my half.

Over the next few months I will sampling various beers, wine and gins, watching my gusset - and fatigued sense of doom - grow. Nice.