NORTHERN MONK FAITH
'I've been around the world, a couple of times or maybe more…. While I love singing along with the chorus from Home Among the Gum Trees, the line that I really like is 'Just you and me, a cup of tea.’ It reminds me of how important it is to sit down at talk. By all means have a conversation over a cup of tea, but if craft is more your thing, you'll be well served by this offering
Origin – Leeds, United Kingdom
ABV- 5.4%
Size- 440mL can
Style- Pale ale
Be it the words of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis as they headed down to the thrift shop or Sunny, the straight-talking 10-year-old girl from the Suncorp advert who mimics the aforementioned music video, we're told you can do a lot with $20. Stop to imagine then what you could with £5,000.
Russell Bisset already had an idea in his mind when his grandmother gifted him with that amount in 2008 – he promptly registered the brand Northern Monk. His plan was simple – build a brewery, putting his home town on the craft beer map, and take his beers to the world! Yet despite the journey beginning in 2008 and getting some traction through gypsy brewing, Bisset's dreams only really became a reality in 2014 when Northern Monk moved into The Old Flax Store, a former linen mill in a 160-year-old industrial building in Leeds’ town centre. The permanent home was a massive step for both the brand and Bisset, yet along with head brewer Brian Dickson, the pair were just getting started.
With beer sales doubling year on year and little room for expansion of their heritage-listed brewery and taproom, in 2017 they built a production facility. That was followed in 2018 by a crowdfunding campaign which netted the lads a tidy £1.5 million, allowing them to open an additional taproom in Manchester in 2019, and earmark another for London. Though the money helped, Bisset has always been about the craft and the community. The latter demonstrated recently by the launch of his ‘For the North Foundation’, which offers £5,000 grants for community projects in the local area. The foundation was initially funded by the release of the UK’s most expensive bottle of beer. The £1,000 per bottle Ben Nevis Barrel Aged Stout was named after the summit where the stout was physically made. However, it’s not only the specials and the seasonals that are shaping the headlines. Along with being crowned Brewery of the Year at the recent UK Brewers Journal Brewer's Awards, this Faith, which forms part of the core range picked up the Beer of the Year gong. Taste it, and you can see why. As a modern pale it balances the three-hop combination of Citra, Mosaic and Columbus to deliver a tantalising nose of mango, citrus and tropical fruit with just a touch of spice. Those tropical aromas flow into the flavour profile, with the addition of pine and pepper. It finishes with a delicious juicy citrus tang that's perfectly offset by a trace of moderate hop bitterness.
In Macklemore words, this is f$#king awesome!