Brewing yard wins by a mile

Jul 11 2008 by Alastair Gilmour, The Journal

THE PUB on the street has a yard at the back. The yard at the back has a micro-brewery in an outhouse. The micro-brewery in the outhouse serves the pub over the yard. Let’s call it the Yard of Ale Brewery.

Simple reasoning, nice pub, super micro, fantastic beer, lovely people. The Surtees Arms in Ferryhill, County Durham, was bought in February 2007 by Alan and Susan Hogg with a note in their business plan that in-house brewing would be up and running within two years.

Even allowing for delays in planning permission, observing rules and following regulations, they have achieved their goal with time to spare. Yard of Ale is brewing once a week and can spare enough to sell to eager customers across the county.

“We sold out the first brew in a matter of days,” says the enterprising Alan. “The second brew has all gone, the third is all taken up with orders and I’m doing our fourth right now – which is almost all sold. But we have to make sure we have enough for the pub. I’ve also had three beer festival organisers ordering beer which is great for your confidence.”

The Hoggs have done their homework; they studied the market, formed the ideal pub in their heads, then left high-flying careers in the simple desire to do something for themselves.

There were no rose-tinted glasses, few images of honeysuckle-covered inns, or clip-clop of passing horse and hounds to distract the practical pair. Alan is an electromechanical engineer by trade and had worked at Stephenson Gobin – part of British Engines – at High Etherley for 17 years, man and apprentice. Susan, a highly-qualified nurse, was project manager for Southern Cross, one of the country’s biggest care homes groups.

“I started off on the shop floor and was engineering manager at the end,” says Alan. “We both had very good jobs, but highly stressful ones at the same time. I did a masters degree at Durham University in production design and manufacturing – part of it was trouble-shooting at North East companies which opened my eyes a bit – and got to a point that maybe there was another way.

“We were on holiday and Susan said, ‘why don’t we buy a pub?’ We had always worked very, very hard and decided to go for it. The Surtees Arms ticked all the boxes; it isn’t a town-centre pub, it had built up a profile for cask ale through the previous owner and it has decent outbuildings which was half the battle. I’ve pretty much always been interested in real ale. We used to go to all the local beer festivals – Bishop Auckland and Darlington – and I joined the Campaign For Real Ale (Camra), then was on the committee of the Wear Valley branch.

“I got inspiration from Simon Gillespie at the Grand Hotel in Bishop Auckland. It was my local and when he started brewing his own beer – Wear Valley Brewery – it worked out great for them. This is the hardest I’ve ever worked. Straight away the roof blew off in a tornado, then came the electrical faults – running a pub is all about repairs.

“It’s a 2.5-barrel (90 gallons) brew plant. We thought about a five-barrel investment but we felt comfortable at that level. I did a three-day start-up brewing course at Brewlab in Sunderland and had an absolutely fantastic time. They were very thorough and very professional.

“We did brewery visits as well, everywhere from Mordue’s big plant in North Tyneside to Bull Lane in Sunderland, which is the same size as ours. We did all the commissioning work ourselves, the electricals and the water supply.

“Graham Moss from Moss Brew in Blackburn was extremely helpful. It only took half a day to fit and then we went through the manual.”

A potential red-tape handcuff was also overcome. The environmental health officer kept asking what he was going to do about “the odour”. Alan quietly said he’d shut the brewery door. He isn’t the first entrepreneur to have to win people over when it comes to matters nasal.

While setting up the original Hawkshead Brewery in the Lake District, former BBC newsman Alex Brodie faced a similar hurdle.

“There’s a steep learning curve in this game,” he says. “Some local residents were worried about the smell – in fact it was the biggest local concern. I said it wasn’t a smell, it was an aroma, and I introduced the word wherever I could. Later, when the planning officer at a meeting referred to the ‘aroma’, I thought, ‘we’ve won’.”

Alan maintains they had no problems at all from local people over smell, odour or aroma, and praises them for their full support, even those who don’t drink real ale.

He says: “Ferryhill Town Council and Sedgefield Borough Council have been great – I even got a Be Enterprising grant and all the start-up advice on VAT, etc, was free. But we need to walk before we run, it’s one step at a time.

“You hear so much about the credit crunch and supermarkets having a negative impact on beer sales, but you’ve got to have a go at it yourself, diversify if you need to, take it into a different marketplace. I firmly believe you have to go out and find people, not just wait for the worst to happen. The brewery is already a big part of the pub business – vertical integration, working smarter not harder – all those buzz words.”

The initial beer is First Yard (3.8% alcohol by volume), a superb and deep copper-coloured ale with a delicate roasted flavour and toffee notes appearing on the palate. The head is remarkably tight and hints of fruit and tobacco work through its developing caramel lusciousness. A complementary style is on the cards which will be lighter and hoppier than First Yard, but they’re still walking before beginning the dry run.

The Surtees Arms has a very tidy bar, lounge, dining room and 60-seater function room. Sunday lunches are the only food offering for the time-being until Susan – “a superb cook” – feels comfortable in running shoes.

“Everything is home-made, no frozen Yorkshire puddings or anything like that,” says Alan, “and I source vegetables from the local allotments. We’re growing three varieties of hops there as well. I’m going to put some of them in our beer, maybe make a special one – it’s a unique selling point. All the brewery waste goes to the allotment for compost – everything works on a barter system round here.

“The Surtees Arms was built in 1872 to serve the coal mining community and the surrounding quarries. It was owned by Forsters Brewery from Bishop Middleham. There was a Wellhouse Brewery in Ferryhill, but I’ve looked at all the old maps in succession and it seemed to disappear in the 1940s. My father and grandfather worked for West Auckland Brewery before it was bought by Cameron’s, so you could say it’s in the blood.”

The word on the street is the brewery in the yard at the back of the pub is well placed to go the extra mile.

The Surtees Arms and Yard of Ale Brewery, Chilton Lane, Ferryhill, County Durham DL17 0DH. Tel: (01740) 655724, www.thesurteesarms.co.uk

alastair.gilmour@ncjmedia.co.uk

The name lives on

THE Surtees Arms owes its name to the widespread County Durham family, the most notable of which is Robert Smith Surtees, who became Lord High Sheriff of Durham in 1856.

Originally from Hamsterley Hall, near Burnopfield, he created the character Jorrocks, the sporting cockney grocer, firstly in the New Sporting Magazine (1831) and developed further in rollicking novels about country life and foxhunting which have drawn comparison with Dickens.

He was a friend and admirer of Ralph Lambton, whose great interest was hunting around Sedgefield. Further information at www.r.s.surteessociety.org