EVERY week we talk about the good beer. Sometimes, the great beer. Every once in a while, the truly wonderful, fantastic 'how-did-they-make-it-taste-so-amazing' beer. But not today.
Today, I want to talk about BAD beer. Because take it from me, that's what you should be drinking this week.
Go forth, seek it out, buy it and drink it. You'll love it. BAD beer, I can assure you, is very good indeed.
If you're bemused and baffled, rest easy. I have not taken leave of my senses, nor signed an insidious sponsorship deal with some brewer of watery rubbish.
No, I have simply been to Dishforth, home to North Yorkshire's newest brewery: BAD. Or, to give them their full name, BAD Co Brewing and Distilling.
If you were at last month's York Beer and Cider Festival on Knavesmire, the name will be familiar. BAD scooped the top prize, LocAle beer of the festival, with Comfortably Numb, their tremendous, hop-heavy pale ale.
Comfortably Numb at the York Beer and Cider Festival (picture courtesy of twitter user @York_Ale_Guru)
It has a powerful fruity taste that belies its fairly low ABV of 3.8 per cent, perfectly suited to those who don't want to go overboard but who are loath to compromise on taste.
Brewery owner Paul Holden-Ridgway says that ten years ago, he "couldn't have given away" such a beer. But palates have changed, he says - and he has now ordered a year's worth of Mosaic hops from Yakima to ensure he keeps up with the inevitable surge in demand.
If Comfortably Numb is the principal beer in the range, it is far from the only star. Love Over Golden is a New World pale ale, Wild Gravity is an IPA and Dazed And Confused is a truly superb milk stout.
As you read this, Paul will also be well on with his American spiced-pumpkin ale, inspired by Brew Dog's Pumpkin Head and authentic American examples he has tried. Beyond that, he also plans to source some oak casks, so he can do oak-aged beers, and he is in talks with some of the region's other leading brewers with a view to some collaboration beers. Well-targeted experimentation is very much the name of the game, and BAD beers will also be available in bottles and kegs by the end of the year.
Paul is keen to make a name for himself, and is targeting the region's best bars.
"We want to be in places like York Tap, Sheffield Tap, the cooler bars that are pushing the boundaries," says Paul, and the beers have already been proving popular at The Maltings and The Duke of York among others.
BAD are a new entry to the beer scene, having begun brewing only in June and distributing only in August. But they come with some pedigree. For the past 14 years, Paul and his wife Debs have been running Blind Jacks, a superb real ale pub in Knaresborough, and for the past three years Paul has been running Knaresborough Brewery from its back yard, building on experience gained doing shift-work for Roosters.
Blind Jacks in Knaresborough.
Two years ago, his American Style Milk Stout won beer of the festival at Knavesmire meaning this year's award was a first for BAD but a second in three years for the brewer.
"When we took on Blind Jacks I did not know anything about real ale," Paul admits. "But I offered Roosters help to understand more about it, then started home-brewing and got on a few courses - and then it took off from there."
Knaresborough Brewery will continue to operate, but predominantly for Blind Jacks, and Paul's focus now is unmistakeably here in Dishforth, in his vast warehouse brewery near the airfield.
His victory at the 2012 festival prompted him to think about developing his little pub-brewery into a serious, viable business, and - after fruitful discussions with a business-minded friend, BAD is the result.
The brewery is sparsely populated at the moment, the brew kit standing out in a large room of virtual emptiness. There is a main 13-barrel brewery, with a smaller 2.5-barrel kit behind it - but things will get a lot busier soon.
Early in 2015, the brewery will have a little brother in the form of a distillery, two 500-litre pot stills producing vodka, gin, rum and even a Yorkshire whisky. The ageing regulations around whisky mean we won't be enjoying that for several years yet - but we can content ourselves in the meantime by enjoying this brilliant bad beer.
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