Before York Brewery opened its doors, there hadn’t been a brewery within the city walls for 40 years.
It was a risky undertaking. But Tony Thomson and his small team opened on Toft Green on May 17, 1996.
Using second hand kit, a lot of nous and relentless hard graft, York Brewery soon made a name for itself thanks to its genuinely fantastic beers.
And to celebrate 20 glorious years the Toft Green team are planning… a knees-up in a brewery!
For two days, Friday May 20 and Saturday May 21, they are throwing open the doors of the brewery and inviting everyone to join the celebrations.
Between 12pm and 6pm on both days there will be hourly free tours, live music, prizes to be won and cask ales for only £1.90 per pint.
Brand new beer
Clearly a milestone anniversary like this could not pass without its own special beer.
And the experts at York Brewery, taken over in 2008 by Mitchells of Lancaster, have crafted Score (3.9% AVB), a pale-gold session ale.
You want to know what it tastes like? Well, it “has a light malt palate with some lingering caramel notes.
“The combination of four beautiful American and Australian hops give it a huge hit of citrus and tropical fruits with more spicy & floral top notes.”
Brand manager Neil Arden said: “This beer is our mark on the post, and here’s to many more!”
He added:
To produce this extra strong celebration ale, we’ve taken the same basic concept as Score, but cranked everything up.
The brewery in numbers
Since that opening day – fully 175,320 hours ago – they have brewed a total of 27,250,000 pints.
That’s a pint produced every 23 seconds – enough beer fill more than six Olympic sized swimming pools.
Neil said: “Twenty years is around 631,152,000 heartbeats. That’s a more poetic settling of the score…”