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| Steve Hucker remembers his Christmas night out at the Tower Brewery... |
| Christmas at the Tower | |
Branch Christmas event 2006; As newcomers to CAMRA we’ve been looking forward to our local branch Christmas knees up for some weeks and our expectations of the evening were certainly fulfilled. The evening’s event was held at the “Tower Brewery” Friday 1st December 2006. The brewery which used to be a water tower belonging to Salts and later Bass still sits on one of the many old wells here in Burton, unfortunately the water can not be used on this present day. The branch members and I would like to take the opportunity to say a big “thank you” to our host, the proprietor and head brewer of the brewery John Mills with his fine ales, a true Burtonian who I am sure could stand up along side with the great William Bass and John Marston to name a few. Myself, my wife and my brother and sister in law arrived at the brewery around 7.30 that evening and were greeted by the early bird drinkers and our host. There were 4 beers on offer: Bit of Fresh 4.6% - a one off golden beer blended with the brewery’s own hop, and as per its name turned out to be a bright, light refreshing ale. Winter Spirit 5% - a typical winters ale, dark mahogany colour; a fruity black currant taste with a smoky chocolate undertone. Hob 4.2% - a dry hoppy golden ale; a definite session beer. Fossbrooke 3.8% - a delightful single malt, pale in colour, with a traditional cleansing citrussy hop taste. I started with a pint of “Bit of Fresh” before I took in the sights of this small mighty brewery. A lot of the original architecture still exists in this brewery and would date back to around the late 1800’s. The arched windows, timber trusses and metal girders which would have supported the water storage tanks of years ago span across the brewery ceiling which gave a nostalgic atmosphere to the evening. We all shared the floor that evening with John’s modern brewery which complemented gracefully this majestic building. The copper, mash tun and the conditioning tanks seem to mingle in with our crowd of drinkers. There were approximately 50 of us who revelled in the evening. Around 9.30 our fish, chip and peas supper arrived and by now I had supped another Winter Spirit, my 5th pint of the evening. Everyone tucked into their supper and by the time we had finished eating with our fingers we had found the fish and chip forks! We all drank well that evening, we drank dry the Fossbrook and Bit of Fresh and nearly finished the rest of beers. If only we had another couple of hours we would of drank the brewery dry. We left the brewery for our taxi at 11 o’clock leaving in the brewery the aroma of fish and chips... Poor John. And the hang over the following morning... what hangover! Here’s to real ale... Cheers! |
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Steve Hucker |