GAVIN AITCHISON visits The Hop Studio at Elvington

TWO ageing wooden casks sit conspicuously in the middle of the floor, visibly out of place in a room full of metal.

In a brewery that is unmistakeably modern, they are an intriguing blast from the past, tantalisingly incongruous amid pallets of steel.

Dave Shaw, boss here at The Hop Studio, feels obliged to explain – and he reveals a riveting story.

The casks, he says, are part of an exciting Yorkshire experiment, a dive back into Britain’s brewing history. They have been sent to his base on Elvington Industrial Estate by The Junction pub in Castleford, currently home to something of a retro revolution.

Landlord Neil Midgley, who previously worked for Sam Smith’s Brewery in Tadcaster, has spent two years amassing 102 old wooden casks and he is now sending them to breweries around the region to source new beers done the old-fashioned way. Following positive feedback from some trials, he has now vowed to sell only beer from wooden casks, the only pub in the north to do so. The Hop Studio is his latest choice, posing a fresh challenge for Dave and his small team. Hence those great hulks of oak on his brewery floor.

Most of the casks have been remodelled from larger hogsheads that once held whisky, some dating back 80 years, Neil says. The wood in the casks will alter the flavour of the beer but it’s impossible to foretell how or to what extent. Indeed the mystery seems a large part of the allure.

“It’s a bit ‘suck it and see’ as you don’t know what is going to come out,” says Neil. “But we’ve been doing this for two to three years now and everything we have tried has come out right. Touch wood.

“We are just working with breweries to create new beers with a unique twist,” he says.

Neil likes the history of the oak casks and says they give ales a more rounded finish. He sells a wooden-cask version of a beer by Elland Brewery and says it tastes completely different to the modern-cask version sold in another pub nearby.

The fact The Hop Studio has been selected is testament to its exceptional performance since launching almost two years ago. While some new breweries have felt compelled to shout from the rooftops, and see extreme brewing as a virtue in itself, Dave and The Hop Studio have quite quietly built a reputation for consistent excellence.

His beers now reach pubs the length and breadth of the UK, from the South-West of England to Scotland, and within weeks someone, somewhere, will drink what Dave roughly calculates to be his 500,000th pint.

He will identify the cask he believes contains the landmark pint, notify the landlord and then put on a celebration at the lucky pub.

The milestone beer will be in a cask of York, the brewery’s “quaffing ale”, which has gone down a storm with drinkers. It is one of seven permanent creations in the range, but seasonal specials and one-off brews mean there have been 19 different beers in total. Blonde, Gold, XP and York are the most frequently-seen, but others such as Noel (Christmas special), Beerjolais (made with fresh hops), and Porter (brewed with vanilla) have also been very popular.

Like many brewers, Dave is eagerly awaiting the Government’s report into the beer ties operated by the large pub operators, which he hopes will allow more landlords to buy beer directly from brewers, making it easier for him to distribute beer locally.

Until then though, he’s happy to keep quietly making his mark on Yorkshire’s and Britain’s beer scene.

“It’s a difficult market out there and there’s a lot of competition,” he says. “But we are pleased with what we have done in the first two years.”

Twitter: @pintsofview