Thursday, September 20, 2012

Its been a while and Im not sorry!

Please forgive the brashness of my title but Ive been a busy busy man trying to do my job and balance my home life. Tis a tricky thing to do when helping to promote a more than successful new bar in the booming and vibrant Leeds city centre. As my last post was almost a month ago and some of you've read it and some of you haven't but this new bar is Friends of Ham and business is good.
We have just launched the Season on Saison and Claire has picked some crackers to continue the season all the way until the end of Autumn. We started this week with a very well known gypsy brewer Mikkeller with his Saison Solstice a very refreshing saison brewed with elderflower and elderberries giving it almost a complete red colour and taste divine , there isn't much left so i figure you should get down there and get you some. We are following this with a plethora of great saisons including Saison Dupont, another one from Mikkeller and a couple of surprises that will soon reveal itself. We have a couple of exciting events line up for you lucky folks as well a tap take-over by Ilkley and possible MTB with the boys over at Magic Rock(details will be released sooner rather than later.)

Taken from Brewdog.
These are exciting time to be a person of beer in Leeds with the ever so awesome North Bar and all there cool staff, the laid back atmosphere of Mr. Foleys, the greatness that has become Friends of Ham and a very diamonds in the rough like Dock Street and a new place called 26 Aire Street that pour Brewdog over a deers' head I'm sure this is something the crazies at Brewdog would love.
Speaking of those crazy Scots  they have been granted permission to open their bar in the city of Leeds and I for one think is a wonderful idea. The more exposure Leeds can get for great beer the better, for all of us and the more breweries from the south, the states and hell even The Aussies and Kiwis will send there beer over here so we all can enjoy what everyone else is.

Speaking of people doing good things with beer, how about Mr. David Bishop (@broadfordbrewer) winning yet another homebrew contest. Some people are grumbling that things might be fixed but I for one can assure the man loves brewing and makes fanfuckingtastic beer. If you don't believe me come see for yourself when we help launch the beer to the Leeds market that he and @brauker1 made for the Ilkley Brewery competition on the 10th of October.  The man himself should be there and I'm sure he will be more than happy to talk about it and shake hands with anyone that might have any questions for him. (Breweries take note of this man and give him a job). I've been given almost all of his homebrews and I think there has been only one that I haven't been absolutely blown away by so given this fact and my high expectations he has a pretty good track record.
Lastly lets say a big thank you for the organisers of the first International Beer Festival that was held at the Town Hall in Leeds, were there hitches and glitches that made the festival not run as smoothly as hoped yes, but the vast amount of people that showed up made it an instant success. There are plans afoot for next year and it should be bigger, better, and more organised than this year so if you had a bad experience they are promising to make it better. With the likes of Kernel, Hardknott, Magic Rock, Buxton, Quantum, Vertical Drinks and many more all slated to have an even bigger presence next year than this past year I can only assume that this will be a beer festival that you wont want to miss.


So that's my update and what the hell has been going on in my hectic life and the things I've enjoyed over the past few months, so remember get out there and enjoy this fair county(I almost put our fair county I'm sure Leigh from the Good Stuff will get a laugh from that ) and all the beery greatness in it.