Great Yorkshire Bottled Beer

Well, here it is: the follow-up to last year’s Great Yorkshire Beer. One of the few reasons that posts have been light this year on the blog! Let me tell you a few things about it.

The book itself is partly a response to reader feedback following the publication of Great Yorkshire Beer; both individually and in the book trade. Readers wanted more breweries, they wanted a more usable ‘guide’, they wanted something with more scope. The idea of a bottled beer guide wasn’t my first thought when the chance to write another book came to me, but I soon warmed to it. Why not? Why not catalogue the bottled beer being brewed right now in Yorkshire? Why not celebrate the diversity of brewing in the region – much like that in the UK in general – from Sam Smith’s to Magic Rock? Plus, drinking my way round the region would be fun, I thought.

And it was; I tasted beers new and old, discovering new breweries such as Harrogate Brewing Company and Atom, alongside reappraising the likes of Samuel Smith’s, Black Sheep and Timothy Taylor. I learnt new things about breweries that I thought myself familiar with, and made countless new friends in the process. It features beers from every brewery regularly producing bottled beer at the time of writing; over 150 beers from over 60 breweries.

There are no interviews this time – just a short biography of each brewery and tasting notes, alongside some notes on storing beer, common faults, a little food matching, and a list of recommended beer retailers. Simple!

We’ve intentionally published it in time for Christmas, not only to hit the peak time of the year in terms of bookselling but also in response to another bit of feedback, which was that these books make great gifts. I’m really pleased with it, and it’s a great little sister publication to Great Yorkshire Beer. So if you want a little present for the beery person in your life this Christmas, there are worse avenues I could point you down!

Great Yorkshire Bottled Beer is published on 27/10/2014, and is available for pre-order now from Great Northern Books and all other good booksellers. If you’re a store, bottleshop or other business and want to stock the book, drop me an email (on the about me tab) and I will point you in the right direction.