Return to Recent Events

Leicester Branch Trip to Saltaire Brewery & Huddersfield

25th July 2009

Four of our members joined the Leicester party for the trip to West Yorkshire; our reward for working at Leicester Beer Festival back in March.

The first stop was at the Saltaire Brewery in Shipley where Andy Sales had arranged to present several awards to Saltaire & also to Old Spot Brewery who are based at nearby Cullingworth.

Saltaire Brewery was very clean & smart, having started in 2005, their 20 barrel plant is in a listed building that used to be the generating house for the local trams and is also adjacent to the Leeds & Liverpool Canal.
The hospitality was excellent; there were 4 handpumps on the bar offering Old Spot Spot o' Bother & Light But Dark and also Saltaire Empress IPA & Raspberry Blonde all at £2 per pint.
After we had a suitable period to acclimatise to the beers, Andy said a few words before presenting Tony Stephenson, representing Saltaire, with awards for Raspberry Blonde (1st Speciality Beers) & Triple Chocoholic (2nd Porter/Stout). Next it was the turn of Julian Hargreaves, MD of Old Spot, to receive awards for Spot o' Bother (1st Porter/Stout & Gold Beer of the Festival). After a few words of thanks from the recipients & from Bill of Bradford CAMRA, who turned out to be the landlord of our next port of call, it was back to the acclimatising!

From Saltaire Brewery we were made to walk all the way to the Junction at Baildon, which might sound a long way, but, in reality, is only about  a 3 minute walk. The Junction (GBG09 p566), a multi award winning CAMRA pub, was also offering Saltaire & Old Spot beers, alongside numerous others. This is an excellent pub & well worth a visit if you are in the area!

Back to the coach at about 3:30 & off to our last stop - Huddersfield, the exact whereabouts of which seemed a little uncertain!
First stop was the Star Inn, from which we would be collected later. Some of us took up Dennis the Driver's kind offer to take us to the Railway Station in the town centre, so we only had to walk one way back down to the Star. We were also treated to a short tour of Huddersfield on the way.

My impression of Huddersfield is that it probably has more handpumps than the National Forest has trees, every pub we went into seemed to have at least ten! First call was The Sportsman where the selection included Timothy Taylor, Black Sheep & Moorhouses amongst others. Next was the King's Head, one of two pubs in the grand buildings of the Railway Station. There were 10 beers on offer here, the most expensive being a 5%abv at £2.40 a pint!

Time was beginning to press, so it was off to The Grove with 11 guest ales, including Thornbridge Jaipur (5.9%) at £2.60 - much better than the £3 we were having to pay outside the brewery door a couple of weeks ago!
Onward & downward, calling at the Rat & Ratchet (16 handpumps!) before finishing in the Star where there were about 24 beers on offer.

Details of all Huddersfield pubs visited can be found in the GBG09 on page 574.

We were back on the coach at about 7:45 for the two & a half hour trip back to Leicestershire. The H&B members would like to thank both Keith & Dennis for yet another excellent day out visiting some superb pubs (and a brewery!). We all hope Keith enjoys his forthcoming holiday & returns refreshed and ready to start planning again!!

Note:
For those who really enjoyed the beers, the Hollybush Beer Festival at Ashby Parva (1st & 2nd August) are offering, amongst others, Saltaire Bavarian Gold & Empress IPA, plus beers from Thornbridge, Ossett, Abbeydale & Holdens. Click here for more details & full beer & cider list.

Leicester Report

Extra Photos:

Words by Alan Cooke
Photos by Alan & Chris

top