The hotel doesn’t do breakfast. A quick internet search brings up a café within walking distance. That’s where we head. With our luggage, as we’ve checked out.
Cook House Cafe is in a small light industrial estate. And pretty tiny. We grab one of the two tables and look at the menu. It’s pretty obvious what I want. A full English, with extra bacon. And a cup of tea, obviously. It’s pretty good. Just what I need.
Chris isn’t so sure about his wrap. Perhaps not the best choice. This isn’t a wrap sort of place.
We’re due at Holden’s again. This time to look around the brewery itself. George meets us again and guides us through the brewhouse. Starting with the mash tun. Which is served by a Steel’s masher and is clad in wood.
“What sort of mash do you do?” I ask.
”Just a single infusion and sparge.”
I don’t need to ask what their base malt is. I can see the sacks of Crisp Maris Otter. And proper tall hop pockets of Herefordshire Fuggles. All very old school.
We move downstairs to the copper. The really scary steam punk copper. That looks like a Victorian spaceship about to take off. With steam erupting from all its seams. Mike won’t stand anywhere near it. I don’t blame him. It looks like it’s about to explode.
There’s one thing you can guarantee in a brewery visit: lots of walking up and down stairs. We proceed down a set to the fermentation room. Which is crammed with rectangular open fermenters.
There’s a decent head of all the fermenters I poke my head into. They’re cooled by attemperators – metal pipes inside the fermenter through which cold water can be pumped to regulate the temperature of the wort.
At the end of the room are a couple of smaller, round fermenters. Brews are either 24 or 36 barrels. With the rounds used for the smaller batches.
There are also several conical fermenters, which are used for beers that they brew under contract. They also do a lot of contract bottling, packaging an impressive 500 barrels a day. Some they brew themselves but much is tinkered in.
The yeast is simply stored in plastic tubs in a cold room. They’ve been repatching for several decades. They were a bit vague about the original source, saying they got yeast from Wrexham Lager Brewery, Wem and Highgate. Which is a bit of a weird mix. Especially the first. Whatever it is, I’m sure it long ago adapted to the particular conditions in the brewery.
We get to watch a yeast harvest. No parachute here, but a giant vacuum cleaner sucking the yeast down a pipe and into a waiting tub on the floor below. It looks very healthy yeast.
When looking around the cask store, it’s immediately apparent that they use some much larger casks than Marstons. There are some full-size barrels (36 gallons). Chris is amazed by their size.
A tasing of Holden’s beers next. The full set, which is quite extensive. With Ivan, the head brewer, and George’s father, just back this morning from his holiday.
I’m most interested in trying the Old Ale, which I’m pretty sure I’ve never had before. It’s full and chewy. For such a small brewery – they own just 18 pubs – they have quite a wide range of beers. Including a Lager.
Holden’s Mild has a surprisingly complex grist. In addition to pale, there’s also amber, chocolate and crystal malt. Plus No. 1 invert sugar. That’s quite unusual. Few Mild Ales have so many different malts. And no No. 3 invert.
They’ve dug out a 1958 brewing book for me. Which I snap as we chat. From a quick glance, it appears to be about 95% Mild.
It’s been a fun visit. And everyone has been extremely friendly.
As Chris hasn’t been to the Beacon Hotel, we head there next. We’ve time for a pint or two before our train.
We’re dropped off at the side of the pub. Quite close to the brew house, whose open windows suggest brewing activity.
We settle in one of the small front rooms and turn our thoughts to beer. Which in my case means Mild. Mike preferring the drier of the two Bitters on offer.
“Do you want to try a cob?” Mike asks Chris.
“What’s a cob?”
After Mike explains, we get one each. It really is an almost perfect pub snack. Not enough to fill you up, but enough to line your stomach.
Mike returns from a toilet visit to inform us that he bumped into one of the brewers. And that we can go and take a look at the brewery. I don’t need asking twice. Even though I’ve visited it once before.
As I remember, it’s a small, but perfectly formed, Victorian tower brewery. Going grist case, mash tun, copper, fermenters, in vertical order. All on a tiny footprint.
The copper is just a tub made of, er, copper. Bricked into the floor. It looks dead cool, if slightly scary.
“How do you get the colour in Sarah Hughes Mild?”
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that. I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement when I started brewing.”
Fair enough. Wouldn’t want him to get into legal trouble. I would guess about possible ingredients. Except that’s a fool’s game. Didn’t see any invert sugar, though.
The fermentation room looks very American. As it’s filled with Grundy tanks. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in use in the UK before.
Surprisingly, they also use full-sized barrels here. Despite the minute size of the brewery. The brewer tells us that they shift a barrel of the Mild every day. That’s impressive. I can’t imagine many other places selling Mild that quickly. At least, not outside the Black Country.
We only get an hour and half, before we need to catch our train. A shame. I could have happily stayed in the Beacon Hotel until well into the evening, It’s such a welcoming place.
We change in the gloomy hellhole of Birmingham New Street again. The train starts here so we can get on well ahead of time. Chris is sitting in another carriage.
The train manages to be 20 minutes late. In an 80-minute journey. Just as well we’re not in a hurry.
Euston Station is mobbed. Really mobbed. It takes quite a while to escape it. Then struggle over to Euston Square tube. London is so much fun when you’re towing luggage behind you. And up stairs. So many stairs.
We don’t doss around our rooms for long. Or at all. Twenty minutes, or so.
The plan was to go to the Lamb. But Mike is hungry and spotted a Korean place opposite.
“Are you OK with eating there?” Mike asks.
“Fine by me. I love Korean food.”
We manage to squeeze in. Though we only have an hour. Should be long enough, given how hungry I’m feeling.
Beef barbecue is what we order. What to drink? It has to be soju, for me. Not something I get the chance to drink often.
Our waitress is dead impressed when Chris sings along to a K-pop tune that’s playing.
“How do you know that?” she asks.
“It’s one of my son’s favourite songs.”
The food is pretty nice. Except that there’s no kimchi. Which is one of my favourite things. And sort of an essential element of Korean cuisine.
Next stop is the Olde Mitre. A short tube ride away. It’s surprisingly full. With tables now reaching almost all the way up the alleyway leading to the pub. Inside it’s packed, too. Pints packed, we move back outside. Where I, at least, can park my sorry arse in a seat.
“Why is it so full?” Mike asks.
“Because Thursday is the new Friday. No-one goes into the office on Friday anymore.”
“Really?”
There’s a much younger crowd than in the Midlands pubs. A mix of after work drinkers and tourists.
We stay for a couple. The plan being to return to a pub closer to our hotel. Then Mike suggests we go to a cocktail bar instead. Fine by me.
It’s in a basement. With a low ceiling and even lower lights. Pretty full, but we find a couple of stools. Then drink some cocktails. What are they called? I can’t remember. It’s all getting a bit blurry.
It’s just after midnight when we leave.
No need for hotel whisky to speed me to slumber tonight.
Cook House Cafe
20 Brook St,
Tipton DY4 9DD.
Holdens Brewery
George St,
Woodsetton,
Dudley DY1 4LW.
https://www.holdensbrewery.co.uk/
The Beacon Hotel
129 Bilston St,
Sedgley,
Dudley DY3 1JE.
http://www.sarahhughesbrewery.co.uk/
Bento Bab
4 Commercial St,
London E1 6LP.
http://bentobab.com/
Ye Olde Mitre
1 Ely Ct,
Ely Pl,
London EC1N 6SJ.
https://www.yeoldemitreholborn.co.uk/
Discount Suit Company
29A Wentworth St,
London E1 7TB.
http://www.discountsuitcompany.co.uk/
Disclosure: my travel and all expenses were paid by Goose Island.
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8 comments:
A wrap? In a greasy spoon? What was he thinking?
Sounds very like Robinson's Brewery in Stockport, which I've been on the tour round several times, with lots of stairs in a towered building, open fermenters with attemperation pipes, contract brewing and beer in tankers going for bottling. All about to disappear as they leave the town centre and relocate brewing to their packaging plant outside it, with lots of shiny new conicals, although the iconic building, at least the exterior, will no doubt be retained by whoever buys the site and turns it into flats.
I've got a photo of a copper like the Holden's one, from the 1930s, at Fordham's brewery in Ashwell, North Hertfordshire …
Chris beat you at suet pudding but you've definitely won breakfast.
That's so much to see - it looks like it could easily have been a three day trip.
My understanding is that the color for Sarah Hughes mild comes from 15% of the grist being Crystal 140°L.
That is interesting, one of the darker grades of crystal malts.
Oscar
@A Brew Rat
Pretty sure the Crystal in Sarah Hughes would be 140 EBC. The UK has adopted EBC quite thoroughly though with a slightly different standard from the rest of Europe. So it is unlikely that the colour would be given in Lovibond, except if that detail is 100 years old.
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