Milestone Brewing Company

11/05/2021 by Teresa Cottam Leave a comment

Great North Road, Cromwell, Newark, NG23 6JE

About the brewery

Milestone brewery was founded by Ken Munro and his wife Fran in late 2004. The husband and wife duo had previously run the Great Northern pub in Carlton on Trent, as well as The Square and Compass in Normanton upon Trent, before trying their hand at brewing. Ken bought Maypole Brewery and, along with head brewer Rob Neil, set about developing Maypole. He bought the kit and recipes from Dwan Brewery in the Republic of Ireland and set it up in Cromwell, developing the Dwan recipes into a new range and establishing the Milestone Brewery. He then sold off The Square and Compass as well as the Maypole Brewery (which was bought by Rob Neil).

Once Ken had got the Milestone Brewery going he bought the Green Dragon in Lincoln and the William Greenwood Brewery, which he transformed into the Cathedral Brewery (which started production in 2008). He also acquired the lease on The Crown in Normanton on Trent. Milestone keeps its base recipes simple using the four traditional ingredients of hops, malt, wheat and water. It brews 5 days a week and now has a large selection of ales in addition to its core range.

Regular beers

Black Pearl (ABV 4.3%) is a dark stout with a creamy head and hints of liquorice and caramel. It is made with Gallena and American Nugget hops and Roasted Barley malts.

Crusader (ABV 4.4%) is a pale ale with a slightly hoppy aroma and a citrus taste. It is made with Challenger and Progress hops along with Pale Wheat and Crystal malts.

Lion’s Pride (ABV 3.8%) is a copper coloured traditional English ale. It has a hoppy aroma and a hint of bitter lemon.

Loxley (ABV 4.2%) is a golden ale with a lemongrass and honey aroma and taste. It is made using Challenger and Progress hops along with Maris Otter and Crystal malt.

Rich Ruby (ABV 4.5%) is a ruby ale with a fruity aroma and a malty, berry taste. It uses Galena and East Kent Golding hops along with Crystal, Chocolate and Maris Otter malts.

Shine On (ABV 4.0%) is a straw coloured pale ale with citrus notes that uses Liberty, Cascade and American hops.

Regular seasonal beers and specials

Milestone has 31 beers in its standard range and a further portfolio of seasonal beers, including a Christmas beer range, a range of fruit beers and a ‘sporting beer’ range.

Fancy a pint?

Milestone supplies cask and bottled beers to pubs, farm shops and breweries nationwide and to its brewery tap. In addition to its real ale beers the tap offers a wide selection of wines, gins, rum and whiskey. It has a private beer garden with heated, sheltered seating areas that is family friendly, with both children and dogs being welcome.

Tours and Takeaways

Milestone has a beer club which provides access to brewery tours, exclusive tap room events and a discount scheme. Members also receive a case of beer when they join. Bottled beers, mini kegs and poly pins can be bought from the website, with free local delivery. Three and six bottle gift packs are also available.

North Clay Hops

04/05/2021 by Teresa Cottam Leave a comment

The hidden history of Nottinghamshire hops

There are just over 50 farmers growing hops today – half of which are based in the West Midlands and the rest in the South East. However, there was once a time when hops were grown much further north around the small town of Retford, Nottinghamshire. Retford was, in fact, the epicentre of what was known in the trade as North Clay Hops (so-called after the North Clay division of Bassetlaw, of which Retford is part). The town not only held the most northerly hop fair in the country, but the surrounding rural district had hundreds of acres under hop cultivation at peak production in the early 19^th century. A hop fair was also held in Tuxford in the southern part of the North Clay growing area.

Hop production in 1724
* Essex – 890 acres
* Nottinghamshire – 943 acres
* Suffolk – 314 acres
I866 returns from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food

North Clay Hops were considered to be much stronger than Kentish Hops and were famously bitter. It was their distinct bitterness that contributed to the original Nottingham Brewery’s celebrated bitter taste. Hoppiness, which is what produces bitterness in beer, wasn’t always popular. When hops were first reintroduced into Britain, it took some time for the addition of hops to take off as the bitter taste wasn’t appreciated. At this time beer was flavoured using herbs and spices, but hops not only added floral and citrus aromas, as well as bitterness, it helped beer keep for longer.

Although many modern beers add copious amounts of hops, even as late as 1863 they had their detractors. JF Johnston in ‘The Chemistry of Modern Life’ noted that “The clay hops of Kent and Sussex are coarse and rank but those of the small district of Retford, in Nottinghamshire, called the north clays are preeminent in rankness. They give a coarse flavour to the beer, which is almost nauseous to those unaccustomed to it.” Johnston goes on to advocate that better drainage of the land might improve the quality of the hops.

Despite these misgivings, North Clay hops were prized by many and often achieved a higher price than Kentish hops. While Farnham hops were regarded as the finest, followed by Kentish hops, some brewers paid a premium for the lower-yielding North Clay hops because they were thought to be the best hops for strong ‘keeping beer’, since the flavour was slow to fade. “A strong and rank hop, fit only for porter-brewing, when mellowed by age,” noted John Levesque in ‘The Art of Brewing and Fermenting’ (1836).

Hops appear to have been grown in the North Clay area from the seventeenth century onwards. It is not known why they were originally introduced, but DCD Pocock writing in The Agricultural History Review in 1965 (see ‘Some Former Hop Growing Centres’) said that the county was growing large quantities of barley at that time and had significant malt and ale-brewing industries. Since the nearest hop fair was in Stourbridge, some 100 miles away, it might have been a matter of convenience to grow hops more locally. Another theory is that the owners of large estates in the area had connections with the south of England and may have introduced the idea to the area. R Lowe, in ‘A General View of The Agriculture of Nottingham’ (1798), noted that hops were grown “in vallies and wet lands for the most part, not very valuable for other purposes”.

By 1880, hop cultivation in the North Clay area had dwindled to a mere 29 acres. The decline of the industry seems to have been caused by two factors. The first was the advent of the railway, which meant that hops could be more easily sourced from elsewhere. The second was the impact of changing tastes, which favoured Kentish style hops and lighter beers. Production of North Clay Hops plummeted as a result and eventually died out in 1892. Landlords were also known to have instructed tenant farmers to reduce hop production because they were neglecting other (more reliable) crops in favour of hops, with the landlords complaining it was enriching the farmers but not themselves. Hops also had high production costs (6 to 7 times that of grain) and were subject to heavy taxation. The crop was a ‘boom or bust’ crop in Nottinghamshire, easily ruined amid the damper conditions which made it a far less reliable crop than others. This means farmers would struggle to pay their bills in a bad year – hence the landlords’ view that it was too risky and instructions to reduce production.

1823 was a disastrous year for North Clay Hops. The yield from Hop Duties (taxation of the crop) fell from £3,162 in 1822 to just £7 in 1823 before recovering to £1,331 the following year.
E. J. Lance, The Hop Farmer

Remnants of the old trade can still be found locally, however, particularly in pub names such as The Hop Pole in Retford and The Hop Pole Hotel in Ollerton. Wild hops still grow in the hedgerows, woods, verges and gardens of North Nottinghamshire.

Vegan and vegetarian real ale

03/05/2021 by Teresa Cottam Leave a comment

Surely beer – made as it is out of barley, wheat, malt, hops, yeast, fruits and spices – is by nature vegan? Sadly it isn’t that simple. In fact many ales use something called isinglass as part of the filtering process, which derives from dried fish bladders. Although this doesn’t affect the flavour of the beer – it doesn’t make it ‘fishy’ – you probably don’t want to drink something with fish bladders in it if you’re vegan.

Fortunately, we’ve collected a list of beers that are vegan and vegetarian friendly and don’t use isinglass in their production.

Please note:

Beers produced for keg, cask and bottle may have different ingredients. Do not assume that the cask version of a vegan-friendly bottled real ale is also vegan friendly.
If the beer is marked as ‘unrefined’ then there’s a good chance it’s vegan friendly – you should enquire further!
Unrefined, vegan-friendly beer will be cloudy. This does not mean there is anything wrong with it. Advocates of unrefined beer say that not only does the beer still contain live yeast (which is good for you), but isinglass also binds with proteins and hop oils and sucks flavour out of the beer. Embrace unrefined, cloudy beer as being healthier, tastier and more natural just as you would view wholemeal bread as being superior to white!
A cask means a barrel of beer which is conditioned (undergoes secondary fermentation) in the barrel. Real ale is cask beer where the yeast is still live when it’s served, giving the drinker all the health benefits associated with consuming live yeast. Cask ale tends to be less carbonated or ‘fizzy’ than keg ale and therefore more suitable for people who for health or lifestyle reasons wish to avoid carbonated drinks.
Keg ale used to be viewed as far lower quality than cask ale. However there has been a renaissance in keg ale and good quality beers are now keg produced. The main difference between keg and cask ale is therefore that ‘fizz’ (carbon dioxide or nitrogen) is added to the beer in the keg. If you do not like fizzy beer or have digestive problems you might want to steer away from drinking keg beer. That said, kegs can produce very hoppy, strong beers.
Minikegs look like smaller kegs of beer which hold between 8 and 9 pints (5 litres). The beer can either be live real ale (in essence these are produced just like the big casks sent to pubs) or filtered and carbonated like full sized kegs. From the outside you can’t tell if the beer inside is real ale or keg ale.
Some breweries use vegan-friendly isinglass alternatives. Brewers are exploring the use of Irish Moss (a type of seaweed) to clarify beers. Research is going on to find alternative production methods so that beers ‘drop bright’ by using a mixture of used and fresh hops. And, as stated, many drinkers are embracing unrefined, cloudier beers.

Vegan-friendly beers

This is our growing list of vegan-friendly beers. The information comes from the brewers themselves. We caution that you should double check at the time of drinking that the beer you’re drinking is vegan friendly, although breweries do usually mark this at the pump or on the bottle. It’s possible that the beer is vegan friendly (unrefined) without being marked as such.

Abbeydale Deliverance Can and Keg (ABV 8.0%) is a Special West Coast IPA with Simcoe, Centennial and Amarillo hops that deliver a fresh citrus taste with malty sweetness.

Abbeydale Emergence Can and Keg (ABV 4.5%) is a Special session IPS that is dry hopped with Vic Secret and Galaxy that create tropical fruit flavours balanced by Low Colour Maris Otter Pale Ale Malts.

Abbeydale Last Rights Can and Cask (ABV 11.0%) is a Special barley wine that was first brewed in 1997 for Abbeydale’s 25th anniversary. It has toffee, candied peel and dry citrus flavours and is dry-hopped with Willamette, Chinnook, Cascade and Mosaic to balance the sweetness.

Abbeydale Reverie Citra & Cascade Can and Cask (ABV 4.2%) is a Special pale ale created in spring 2021 that is dry-hopped with Citra and Cascade hops to create a light, fruity, floral fresh beer.

Abbeydale Reverie El Dorado & HBC 472 Can and Keg (ABV 4.2%) is a Special pale ale created in spring 2021 that is dry-hopped with El Dorado and the newly-created (and yet to be named) US hop HBC 472 to create a beer packed with tropical fruits.

Abbeydale Salvation Can and Keg (ABV 4.5%) is a Special sea salt and caramel stout that uses Low Colour Maris Otter Malt, roast wheat, Mount Hood and Sorachi Ace hops and added sea salt and caramel flavour.

Abbeydale Serenity Cascade & Galaxy Can, Keg and Cask (ABV 3.8%) is a Regular IPA. Very hoppy session beer.

Abbeydale Unbeliever Grapefruit Radler Can and Keg (ABV 3.0%) is a light and tart grapefruit Special produced in collaboration with Out & About and the Queer Brewing Project.

Abbeydale Voyager Can, Keg and Cask (ABV 5.6%) is a Regular citrus IPA with tropical fruit flavours that uses Citra, Centennial and Mosaic hops. It is unrefined and gluten free.

Acorn Brewery – no vegan friendly beers.

Durham Brewery – no cask beers are vegan friendly.

Durham Cloister Bottled (ABV 4.5%) a bitter that uses Maris Otter Pale Malt, Crytal Malt and a unique blend of hops (English, Czech and American) that deliver a flowery aroma, peach flavour and a refreshing bitterness.

Durham Bede’s Chalice Bottled (ABV 9.0%) a Belgian Tripel (strong pale ale) that uses Maris Otter Malt with a small amount of wheat and Vienna Malt, with the addition of coriander and Centennial American hops. The ale had peach and orange notes.

Durham Black Bishop Bottled (ABV 4.1%) is a dark stout with a crisp coffee flavours plus a little smoke, made using nine malts.

Durham Evensong Bottled (ABV 5.0%) is a ruby beer based on an original 1937 recipe from Whitakers of Halifax. It uses five different malts along with Fuggles and Goldings hops to create a toffee-cherry flavour with hints of kiwi fruit.

Durham Magus Bottled (ABV 3.8%) is a pale ale with lemon and floral flavours and an earthy bitterness. It is also gluten free.

Durham St Cuthbert Bottled (ABV 6.5%) a golden IPA that uses a mixture of English, Czech and American hops to produce a beer with citrus, orange and peachy notes. Not too bitter.

Durham Smoking Blonde Bottled (ABV 6.0%) is a strong mild with a low hop content. It is produced using Pale Maris Otter mals with oak smoked wheat and Citra hops to create a peachy, marmalade flavour with a shot of coriander.

Durham Temptation Bottled (ABV 10.0%) is a Russian stout produced with Crystal Malt, Amber Malt, Black Malt and roast barley. It uses Goldings hops and has a coffee flavour with liquorice notes.

Goacher’s Crown Imperial Stout (ABV 4.5%) is Goacher’s version of a true, bottled Irish stout. Brewed with roasted barley and high levels of Kent Fuggles hops.

Kelham Island Brewery – no cask beers are vegan friendly.

Kent Brewery – a selection of beers are available in 30 litre PolyKegs as unfined live beer, which are naturally hazy and vegan.

Springhead Brewery Drop O’ The Black Stuff Bottled (ABV 4.0%) is an award-winning porter brewed with Maris Otter Pale and Dark malts, roasted barley, aromatic mixed English hops and Nottingham Ale yeast.

Welbeck Abbey Cavendish Minikeg (ABV 5.0%) is a blonde ale named after the House of Cavendish who owned the Abbey. It has crisp, zingy grapefruit flavours.

Welbeck Abbey Harley Minikeg (ABV 4.3%) this honey-coloured ale has a zesty, fresh flavour with notes of orange blossom and a subtle sweetness. It uses American and German hops and is named after ‘The Great Collector’ Edward Harley, who built a huge collection of books and art.

Welbeck Abbey Henrietta Minikeg (ABV 3.6%) is a golden ale named after two famous Henriettas in the Welbeck family lineage: Henrietta Cavendish-Holles and Henrietta Scott. It’s a clean-tasting, delicate golden ale with notes of honeysuckle and fresh hay. Brewed with German Hallertau Brewers Gold.

Welbeck Abbey Kaiser Minikeg (ABV 4.1%) this extra pale beer uses premium German lager hops to deliver a biscuity-sweet but refreshingly herbaceous flavour.

Welbeck Abbey Portland Black Minikeg (ABV 4.5%) a rich porter named after the Duke and Duchess of Portland. It has a subtle smoked taste with chocolate, coffee and vanilla flavours.

Welbeck Abbey Red Feather Minikeg (ABV 3.9%) is a robust auburn ale with a rich colour and walnut flavours combined with bitter sweet caramel. It takes its name from the emblem of Welbeck.

South Yorkshire breweries

03/05/2021 by Teresa Cottam Leave a comment

Abbeydale

Acorn

Blue Bee

Bradfield

Chantry

Dead Parrot

Doncaster Brewery

Exit 33 – brewing suspended

Fuggle Bunny

Geeves

Gorilla Brewing

Grizzly Grains

Heist Brew

Hilltop

Imperial

The Jolly Boys

Kelham Island

Little Critters

Lost Industry

Loxley Brewery

Mitchell’s Hop House

Nailmaker

Neepsend

The Old Vault – brewing suspended

On the Edge

The Regather

The Sheffield Brewery Company

Stancill

The Tapped Brew

Ten Eighty Six

Toolmakers

Triple Point

True North Brew

White Rose

Whitefaced