Behind the scenes at Yorkshire's smallest brewery

See it, and you'd understand why.

Tucked away in a small brick outhouse in an innocuous residential street, this place takes the micro in micro-brewery to a whole new level.

It is, very possibly, the smallest commercial brewery in Yorkshire - compact enough, just about, to fit in the back of a car if need be.

But what it lacks in size, it makes up for in quality.

If you drink in Brigantes, The Maltings or The Rook & Gaskill in York, you will probably have seen Sunbeam beers on the bar in recent months.

But you might not have realised quite how rare the beers are - or that their appearance marks something of a happy homecoming for their creator Nigel Poustie.

For although the beers are made in Rodley in north-west Leeds, Nigel hails from here in York.

Nigel Poustie in front of his brewery

He grew up in Fulford and lived here until he was 19, at which point he left for university in Derby. There, he got into climbing, and he then moved to west Yorkshire to be nearer good climbing spots.

Family followed and after his son Eric was born, he took up homebrewing.

"Right since I was a lad I have always been right into baking and cooking so I guess it was an extension of that," he says. "I was always into making things you can consume.

"The brewing started as a homebrewing hobby. I worked my way through a guide book then began doing my own recipes.

"My first beer was a Timothy Taylor's Landlord clone. Ian at Abbey Home Brew in Kirkstall took me through the whole thing. I never did the packs but I did a few syrups and always wanted to get on to wholegrain brewing, and he gave me recipes to do. I would bring the product back to him to taste and I think he was impressed."

Nigel in the brewery, with his awards 

From there, Nigel moved on to his own recipes, starting with a honey and lavender beer that remains one of his favourites. And before long, he was making a name for himself, winning three rosettes at the 2011 National Homebrewing Competition.

At that point, he says, he was selling bottles occasionally to friends, and then to their friends. But after his success, word of mouth began to work its magic. He began receiving emails from as far away as Scotland the south of England then, when the manager of Beer Ritz in Leeds posted a glowing review online, demand skyrocketed. In 2012, buoyed by the success, he registered as a brewery - named after Sunbeam Terrace in Beeston, where he lived at the time.

The first beers were bottled but today, everything goes into casks, and a very select few make it across here to York. He has called time on his previous work as a support worker for people with learning disabilities, meaning he can focus completely on brewing and spending time with his wife Faye and the kids.

He brews every Friday, casks that beer the following Thursday, then delivers it the Thursday after that. Nigel has no hot liquor tank, so he has to hold the wort in the fermenter before moving on to the boil, meaning each brew takes a couple of hours longer than it otherwise would. And its small size means each brew yields only eight casks - enough to meet only a fraction of the demand.

Most stays around Leeds and Bradford, plus one outlet in Halifax. But the Mended Drum in Huby expressed an interest, and on the back of that Nigel began delivering to York as well. The Maltings, Brigantes and the Rook & Gaskill led the way but The Shambles Tavern is also now on the rounds.

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"It's nice to have my beer in my own home town," says Nigel.

Luck will play its part in finding the beers but you shouldn't need to wait long if you keep an eye on the pubs mentioned or on their twitter accounts: @maltingsyork, @rookgaskillyork, @brigantesyork, and @44theshambles

He tries a new brew every six weeks or so, and has a range of about 15 to 20 that he often revisits. Foggy Morning, recently on the bar in Brigantes, is a delicious unfined wheat beer, infused with lemon grass. Sun-kissed is a punchy, hoppy golden ale. The Shambles Tavern this week has had Born in LS11, an American-style pale ale, and Chocolate Mild, which is beautiful, smooth and rich, while Thunder Road is a plum porter, brewed only every so often, but one of Nigel's own favourites.

"It's 6.2 per cent," he says. "I love it but you cannot do it all the time at that sort of strength. Maybe that's why I love it - because it comes round every now and again."

As for what comes next? He has just begun a single-hopped range, using the same malt base but a different hop each time, and due to the impending US hops shortage, he is also planning an "American" pale ale with English-only hops.