Welcome back to the Eternal Hoptimist’s!
What’s this?! Two brewery showcases in as many weeks?.. they said it couldn’t be done.. but they were wrong!
Those of you may know that aside from reviewing beers Peter also reviews books, and quite by happenstance we appear to have stumbled across quite the cross over, which has resulted in a special meet the brewers Founders.
Take it away Peter.
Tony Gartland came onto my radar quite by accident through one of the other great passions in my life, reading, and especially crime fiction. On Twitter in early 2022 I saw a tweet from an independent publisher Hobeck Books in which they were trailing a series of novels to be set on the island of Malta. As I know the Island well (as does Sam and John) after many fine holidays there, my interest was piqued. Just a few weeks later Hobeck were looking for readers to join their team of advance readers, who read proof copies of their novels before publication, to give an opinion and occasionally spot anything missed in the copy-editing process. Of course, it seems destiny intervened, I was accepted and now in the space of a year I’ve read probably a couple of dozen novels including the first four in Tony’s series and I can say with all honesty they’re bloody good.
The hero of these novels is a hapless Maltese policeman George Zammit. Poor George just wants an easy life, a bit of policing and then coming home to some lovely food, rabbit pasta is his favourite, and a chance to relax in his comfy armchair. Most men would agree, not a lot to ask. His wife has ambitions for him though, well more the trappings of status that promotion will bring him. His boss Assistant Commissioner Camilleri uses George as a pawn in his dealings with a local, powerful crime family, and his stooge for dirty operations. So, George is sent off to dangerous places like Libya, stumbles through the chaos all around and somehow becomes the accidental hero of the situation.
This of course is a beer blog so what has Maltese crime fiction got to do with beer? Well Tony is a bit of a renaissance man, seemingly good at most things he tries, and beer featuring prominently in his near past as Sam and I discovered on a Zoom call a little while ago.
What drew him into brewing?
Tony retired early. He was a commercial lawyer but the pressure and working down in London wasn’t compatible with having a young family so eventually he gave it up. He’s not the kind of man to settle for the easy life, he needed keep busy, to do something creative. He did consider a start up in the restaurant trade, having worked in a commercial kitchen in the past, but a holiday to USA in 2003 where the craft beer scene was exploding changed his mind. He was going to brew beer.
When he got back to the UK he signed up for a Brewlab course up in Sunderland (where Tony is originally from.) There he completed the course, got a thorough grounding in micro-biology and the science of brewing as well as hands on experience with their ten barrel plant. Back in Yorkshire he started looking for a building near to where he lived so there was no commuting and was lucky to find one in Saltaire. So Saltaire Brewery was born.
What does he make of the current beer market?
Saltaire Brewery was set up on very traditional lines, primarily as a cask ale producer and with hindsight a bit more of a craft focus would have been beneficial. At one time the future was craft and traditional beers seemed old hat, but recently there has been a bit of a change. Saltaire sell to many supermarkets and Tony explained how they are sent merchandising photographs. At one time craft cans were squeezing out the premium bottled ales, but recently this has started to reverse and craft selections are contracting in supermarkets with the Co-op delisting many products. Perhaps this is the financial climate starting to bite or the novelty wearing off for the average drinker.
Covid and lockdowns have been a disaster for the industry and the cost increases of power and materials during the past year have bitten, increases have had to be passed on they have no other option. So far, they have been accepted and post lockdowns customers when they go out appear to be less price sensitive than they used to be as we have noticed in Hull and Leeds. Discretionary spend is important and the cost of living ‘crisis’ may not have been felt as severely so far for many in the middle-income bracket, but it would seem people are going out less.
Tony observed that new-style venues have been a godsend, you no longer must a venture fund a couple of hundred thousand pounds just to set up. Small bars, café bars using recycled materials highly individual and as Sam said often passionate about the product.
Then Tony went off to Malta…
His wife is half Italian with family in Sicily and hankered after settling in the Mediterranean and so largely English-speaking Malta was an obvious choice. It’s a bit of a love-hate relationship with the place, like Bradford. He used the pen name AJ Aberford for his books because he wasn’t sure how they would be received with their warts and all description of the place. Luckily for him they have gone down well and are selling on the Island.
The beer scene in Malta is not great though, is it?
It’s just showing signs of improving. There’s a couple small breweries now, including one on Gozo with a girl who worked at Northern Monk (small world) but the market is tied up by the monolith that is Cisk lager (Simonds Farsons Cisk). The was a Lowenbrau Malta for a while and Tony looked at their former kit when he briefly considered setting up again, but it’s just too difficult getting the traction needed to successfully compete.
Tony splits his time between Malta, Italy and Yorkshire leaving the running of the brewery to his son and his best friend. This gives him time to spend on his third career writing crime/geo-political thrillers set in the Mediterranean; the first four have been published by Hobeck Books and the fifth is due for publication later in 2023.
If you want to check out any of Tony’s work you can pick up a copy and find out more about them here.
We did reach out to the brewery to answer some further questions surrounding there current brewing process, but unfortunately we have not heard anything back as of yet. Should we hear anything we will keep you posted!
in the meantime, If you want to check out some of the traditional tipples made by Tony, or any of the breweries more recent craft creations you can purchase them from the brewery shop, and you can follow them on social media, i will leave a link to both of these below.
Twitter : @SaltaireBrewery
Instagram: Saltaire Brewery
Website and Online Store
Until next time, drink responsibly, and have a good one!
The|Eternal|Hoptimitsts 
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