Beer and pub column

IT was perhaps inevitable.

After the futile fun of the Boaty McBoatface campaign earlier this year, breweries have been paying their own little tributes.

At least six UK breweries have now produced ales called, you guessed it, Beery McBeerface. And the latest of those will be the toast of hundreds in York city-centre this month.

Boaty McBoatface, you’ll recall, was the runaway winner when the public were asked to choose a name for the National Environment Research Council’s new polar research ship – only for the people to be overruled, with it being named RSS David Attenborough Instead.

There’ll be no such mutiny in the beer world though. Short's Brewery, Crafty Devil, Abbeydale, Thirst Class and Holt's have already produced Beery McBeerface brews. And now York’s Treboom Brewery have teamed up with York Art Barge to do the same.

The York beer has been brewed for the York Festival of the Rivers, which runs from July 27 to 31.

Treboom beers have been on the bar for the past few years, but this year organisers decided they wanted their own unique beer.

Marcia Mackey, director of the Arts Barge Project, said: “It’s the first time we have had our own entire brew. We have always thought about it but did not think we could.

"We did not know how much we would need to brew, but when we realised last year that we used just short of a whole brew, we thought – why not? People will want to support us by drinking the beer. We just love Treboom beer; everybody does. And it’s also about the local aspect of things – trying to buy everything we get from local companies.”

John Lewis, co-owner of Treboom, says: “This will be the fourth year we have supplied the bar. Also Jane [brewery co-owner and John’s wife] is an artist so it’s a good relationship for us. We want to be associated with this sort of event. It locks in well with what we think.”

Marcia joined John on Tuesday to brew the beer, a light, golden ale with an ABV of 3.9 per cent, and brewed with a mixture of British and American hops. It will be on sale in the festival tent in Tower Gardens, near Skeldergate Bridge.

  • Beery McBeerface is the latest in a series of one-off or new beers brewed by Treboom this year. Its French-style farmhouse beer Avant Garde went down well last month, John says Hop Americana has been a big hit this month, and look out in August for Five Continents.

That one is being brewed to tie in with the Olympic Games, and will include hops from America, Europe and Oceania, star anise from Asia, and grains of paradise from Africa.