OnTap Magazine

Landlord is the most awarded beer in Britain YORKSHIRE-BOUND I made a brief stop in my home town of Stoke-on-Trent, birthplace of Robbie Williams, some of the world’s finest pottery (including toilet bowls), and the captain of the Titanic. We are proud of all three, with the city’s longest-running brewery named for the ill-fated ship (indeed at one point I’m pretty sure they used the tongue-in-cheek tagline ‘you can sink a few’). The brewery has a love-it-or-loathe-it plum porter (I’m a fan) and a delectable ruby ale named for the ship’s captain, local lad Captain Smith. I was mainly here to see my family though, and to kidnap my mother, or at least jump in the car with her on a quick tour of the Yorkshire countryside. Of course, I had more than hills and dales in mind, the route planned not around taking in scenic views but of course, around taking in great beer.. Our first stop was Masham, home to a duo of real ale breweries. After a hearty pub lunch featuring a near- perfect pie, we toured the 200-year-old Theakston’s brewery, ending with a taster tray by the fire, then headed to the much newer Black Sheep. The brewery hadmade news just weeks earlier for announcing that they were going into administration but when we dropped by the pints were still pouring, so we celebrated with their Riggwelter strong ale and a pint of the superb best bitter. THE PERFECT PINT The next day we set off for the brewery that had really brought me to this part of the world. We passed patchwork fields in varying shades of green, playing pub cricket and attempting to pronounce progressively unpronounceable place names along the way. I’d already got our first port of call wrong (it’s mass- um, not mash-um) and had embarrassed myself referring to our destination – Keighley – as key-ley and not keith-ley, so by the time I saw the first sign for Mytholmroyd, I just gave up. Keighley could not be called the jewel of Yorkshire. It’s a kind of gritty, industrial place that regularly makes it into those ‘worst place to live in Britain’ lists. It is also home to the brewery that inspired this whole trip: Timothy Taylor's. B ritish people are probably some of the most self-deprecating on the planet. We are terrible at accepting compliments, we laugh at our weather, we laugh at our food. In fact, laughing is about the only thing that we openly admit we do well, for we are proud of our sarcasm and self-disparaging humour. But in private, British people are actually rather proud of many of the elements of their culture – the music, the TV and yes, even the food. I haven’t lived in the UK for two decades but there are still a couple of things that I miss about Blighty, things that make me feel proud of my homeland, and right at the top of this list is the greatest of British institutions: the pub. There is just something about a proper Britishpub. Carpet that smells of a thousand spilt pints, walls adorned with random diagrams of fisherman’s knots or breeds of sheep, feisty bar staff who’ve seen and heard it all. And of course, a fine selection of hand-pulled beers to choose from. Cask ale is the Britain’s gift to the global beer world, a piece of liquid culture that has never travelled well but is definitely worth travelling to the UK for. When I landed in Manchester earlier this year, I had three goals in mind: the first was to catch up with family and friends. The second was to skim-read and then destroy the cringe-making diaries I kept between the ages of 11 and 18. And the third was to drink only cask ale, aiming to never order the same beer twice. Timothy Taylor's Landlord Dark Mild by the fire Black Sheep Brewery in Masham The English IPA is a rare beast Cask ales taste great with US hops The Black Bull in Paradise serves as the tasting room for Theakston Brewery in Masham ontapmag.co.za | Spring 2023 | 27