Hello my fellow beer lovers,
Today we are having a chat with the folks over at the Multi-award-winning Ilkley Brewery. The Ilkley Brewery Co. Ltd. was founded in January 2009 and commenced brewing in May of the same year. The now-famous Mary Jane, which is the brewery’s flagship session beer was first brewed in August 2009 and won its first award in September of the same year, since then the brewery has seen similar success with a number of its tipples, and has become one of the crowning jewels in the crown of Yorkshire breweries.
“Thank you for taking the time to talk to us today, now most of us in Yorkshire at least are well aware of Ilkley Brewery. However, It’s not uncommon to have a brewery named after the area it’s situated, Other than its name, can you tell us how your beer is connected to the local area?”
Well there was a brewery in the town as far back as 1873. The run-off hot water was actually used to power part of the town. So Ilkley has always been “powered by beer”. And these days, our flagship beer, as you mention, Mary Jane takes her name from a local folk anthem “On Ilkley Moor Bah t’at” which charts a guy courting a certain Mary Jane up on our local windy, chilly Moor.
“Ah Mary Jane, so not just a catchy name, but a story behind it as well, clearly you put a lot of thought and pride into naming your beers, can you tell us a little more about the inspiration behind some of your other choice tipples”
So a lot of the beers in our core range encapsulate the family feel that runs through the brewery – we invented a name for Mary Jane’s suitor in the song, and that became our bitter – Joshua Jane. They had a daughter (we even put a birth announcement in the local paper!) called Ruby Jane (a Mild) and it was a no brainer to call our alcohol free beer, Virgin Mary. Over the years, having brewed over 200 unique beers, we’ve had a lot of fun with naming specials. In fact, later this year look out for our alternative take on the Euros with our qualifiers for the Beer Name World Cup.. where we’ll be asking the public to vote for their favourite fun beer names we’ve done, such as Notorious F.I.G (a Fig Dubbel), ImPeachMint (a sour brewed in honour of He-Who-shall-Not-Be-Platformed) or The Man From Dunkel (A smoked Dunkelweisse).
Thats a brillaint way to engage withyour custoemrs, i will be sure to keep my eyes peeled for that! Now we all know that Ilkley brewery is one of the crowning jewels in Yorkshires ale crown, but what has been your most terrible error when brewing?”
Well, fortunately we have a very skilled and technical team designing and delivering our beers, but I do recall a couple of times when we ended up a little off plan – once by an oversight of design (in the early days before we had qualified technical brewers) and once when someone mis-read the numbers on the brewsheet. Both times we ended up with dramatically different beers, but both ended up still tasting excellent, and so it became more a matter of quickly drawing up some marketing, a new name and selling a new special. One “mistake” even went so well we re-brewed it another 3 times!
“Now that is a waste no want not situation, speaking of waste, what efforts do you make to be environmentally friendly?”
Being as green as possible has always been very important to us. The brewing process is an extremely water-intensive one, but we try to be as closed-loop as possible. We use heat-exchange technology to recycle our water and save on energy consumption. We also work with local farmers to make use of our spent grain and hops, meaning they don’t need to ship in supplements. Our malt is all grown in the UK and has minimal shipping miles. We also work to ensure all of our packaging, from bottles, to cans, and even to kegs are fully recyclable and made from recycled materials themselves.
“In your opinion, what’s the style most fun to brew?”
Getting consistency from our core beers is always extremely satisfying, but when it comes to having fun and letting our hair down a bit, it’s all about collaborations. The brewing industry is such an open and friendly one, and we all share knowledge as well as beers and good times. 2019 was our 10th anniversary and we celebrated by brewing a range of “Hail Mary’s” – crazy reworkings of our classic Mary Jane. So we brewed with Tiny Rebel from Wales, Five Points from London and even a couple of brewers over from Italy, among many others. As well as being a fun day itself, sharing stories and a few beers, the nature of these projects mean we can be a bit more adventurous, and so we brewed sours, milkshake pales, black IPAs and a wide variety of styles.
Its nice to hear that the brewing industry has such a good community feel, and strive to make intersting new beers. If there were a beer that you could brew with no regard to cost or production or sales, what would it be and why?”
Ha, good question! Of course we don’t brew by spreadsheet, it’s all about getting the best quality and flavour. But we do of course have to balance the fact that we’re a business and need to sustain ourselves and keep things sensible to a certain extent. So brewing higher abv beers always has an impact on cost, and also smaller potential sales. Adding things to beer further adds cost. If we had a principal of universal beer price and universal wage in some utopian alternate reality, we’d have a major barrel-ageing programme. There are so many flavours that can be played around with when it comes to Imperial Stouts, Barley Wines and the like – desserts in a glass. We could let our inner chef loose!
“You had me at Desserts in a glass! How do you reach beyond the hardcore beer drinkers and into the general public to sell your beer?”
The beer industry, like many others has a loyal and hardcore base. I always liken it to music, where people have favourite bands and tend to get all their albums and go to all their gigs. So producing beers that are consistent and meet expectations is really important, but also releasing fresh new material. If there is one silver lining of this awful pandemic, it’s that we’ve been able to connect directly with our drinkers – in the past our business was 100% to pubs, bars and shops, and we have no immediate relationship in terms of selling direct to the public. Now we have pivoted and built up a network of relationships with people through delivering to doorsteps across the nation, it’s meant we are closer to what people want, and can adjust our plans and output accordingly. I feel that whilst we are far from the end of this crisis, as a brewery, we have just about worked out a good way of operating and rather than reacting to constant changes, we can now plan ahead and start to think a bit more about recording a new album!
“And finally, what’s next on the agenda for Ilkley brewery”
Next on the agenda. Well, after such a challenging year for everyone, personally and professionally, and so much uncertainty ahead, there’s an air of cautious optimism round these parts. We’ll look to build on our successes selling online going forward, and then look to cater for some built up demand for beer drinking in pubs this summer hopefully. I’d love to think we’ll be able to get in a few (particularly outdoor) events at the brewery before the end of the year.
And that Concludes todays Interview with Ilkley Brewery, I will be doing a series of beer reviews covering a number of their tipples over the next week, so please keep your eyes open for those, in the meantime please feel free to check out Ilkleys online store, and stock up on their very tastey beers!
The|Eternal|Hoptimitsts 