East Yorkshire…one of three English regions I currently wear the crown for…so worthy of a bit of detail.
My first trip to EY was 1999, just a couple of months after my daughter was born. We bravely ventured up to stay just over the North Yorkshire border for a week, but explored and enjoyed much of the county and especially the coast on a few day trips from there. Though my “welcome to East Yorkshire” experience had actually been Goole on the way up. We’d gone up via the A161 after an overnight stay in Lincoln. I remember Goole as being a place I was glad I was driving through rather than to.
My first experience of Hull was many years later during my “have a pint in a Good Beer Guide pub in every English county in 12 months” challenge (which I can just about say I achieved as GBG back then merged Rutland with the Leicestershire chapter). I was staying in Leeds for work - work trips always get a mention in these reviews of mine and I miss them so much - and got a train ticket to Hull and back for a quick visit one evening with just time enough in Hull to get from the station to the Admiral Of The Humber, down a pint, and get back again to catch the same train back to Leeds. I remember Hull (and especially the Admiral with it’s ambience score of 1 assuredly secured) as being a place I was glad to be leaving. Though perhaps in some kind of future premonition I see my insightful place review from back then concluded with “I’m sure the Hull beer scene is worthy of spending more time appreciating”.
As that’s just what I did do in May 2019 with a couple of nights in Hull to coincide with Hull Beer Festival. And I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed my visit. The beer festival at the fabulous Hull Minster (what a setting for a festival that is), the various pubs I visited were all good (though steered clear of the Admiral this time!), wandering the city centre and stunning marina and quayside areas, chatting with some of the friendliest local folk, meeting up with @danlo, glorious spring sunshine, (mostly) decent beers…had a really good time - and was a trip I had fully intended to repeat in 2020…if they hold one in 2021 (and I see they have a “provisional date in mind” later in the year) then I definitely plan to go, and if they don’t then yeah @SHIG I’m up for a pub crawl there. I’d like to get up the coast again too.
As for the stats (briefly): 185 beers from 23 different breweries - @imdownthepub beats me again on that stat - and 7 places rates. Lion and Key (Cathead) was my favourite pub. Atom are my highest volume brewery at 39 (which puts them in my global top 10 count) and probably highest rated too, though Half Moon, Bone Machine and Yorkshire Brewhouse all have a beer I scored highly.
My tally is 58 ratings from East Yorkshire, the highest is Atom Double Helix at 3.9
Have done afew enjoyable trips drinking around Hull in pre-ratebeer days, including watching rugby league at the KC Stadium to see Australia win vs Great Britain in 2005. Visited in 2019 for the Hull Real Ale & Cider Fest, meeting up with Grumbo - that was in the Hull Minster which is a fantastic place, amazing to be sitting in the church pews rating, plus afterwards I went onto afew cider pubs - the Whalebone and the Hop & Vine being standouts.
In terms of ciders, there are 4 cideries with Colemans the most active with 16. The top 5 lists are:
East Yorks never a county I’ve visited too much over the years. A couple of visits to Hull in the 80’s when travelling around the UK by train … first trip as an adult was to one of the last games at Boothferry Park with Leicester in a league cup tie in late 2002. A quick in and out job on the supporters coach, with it being midweek, so never got to explore pubs of note and merely a case of a few pints in some bland pub near the ground. I visited the KC stadium a few years later … well before RB days and went to a GBG pub in the city centre but no memories if im honest.
Fast forward to February 2020 before my next and latest visit to the East Riding. On the way to Cloudwaters Friends & Family beer festival in Manchester, Dave, Fergus and myself spent an afternoon/early evening in Hull taking in Tap House Hull (Yorkshire Brewing/Bone Machine), The Corn Exchange (Atom) and the Lion and Key (Cathead).
A decent trio of venues if lacking a little in quality beer … Atom at the Exchange aside.
This little sortie certainly bumped up my E Yorks rate somewhat by a good 20 or so.
84 rates for the county averaging 3.25 scored by myself … very much a mid table county for me in joint 26th place overall.
Of my 84 rates, 38 come from Atom and my highest scoring beers at 3.8 are Atom PH and Atom Trajectory … in fact 23 of my 25 highest rated E Yorks beers are Atom numbers!
So overall … a just ‘OK’ county without too many brewers that I’m interested in but I’d certainly do a pub crawl in Hull again in the future.
East Yorkshire is one of the counties that borders my home Lincolnshire, so maybe a surprise that I have only visited the county (for beer) once, and tried 106 beers. Putting me at 7th for the county.
Only 3 of those beers have been rated over a 4, they are:
Its fair to say that the best beers I have had from the region are from Atom and Bone Machine.
I have tried 19 breweries, putting me 4th. I have had the most beers from:
Brewery
Total
Atom
31
Great Newsome
22
Yorkshire Brewing
19
Closed
Bird Brain
18
Closed
Bone Machine
15
All my 5 place rates are from 1 day in 2019 when I went for a small pub crawl and to see a Banksy.
Its always surprised me that beers from East Yorkshire struggle to travel south into Lincolnshire. I picked up a fair few rates at the 2019 York Beer Festival. I really can’t wait to go back to the one, but Hull isn’t a placed I’d rush back to.
A number of weeks ago I decided not to post to these regional stat attacks if I had nothing to say.
However, I have decided that by not posting I am hiding a general ignorance in the population which is important to note.
Therefore for the record, when it comes to East Yorkshire I have no rates, have no knowledge of their breweries and have never visited the region in my life.
Bumping this solely because I’ve just had my first East Yorkshire RB rate (Atom Uncertainty Principle - Denali, which was very good) and am very much more chuffed than I should be! 400th rate on here, and now just 2 counties away from ‘completing’ England (until a brewery moves and shafts me). It’s the little things that keep me going …
During a winter holiday a handful of years ago, where we stayed a little east of York, I suggested to my wife that we visit Hull, to which she said ‘‘ull is a bloody dump, we’re not going there’’ so I didn’t make it for any sneaky brewery tap visits. We did visit East Yorkshire, but it was off season at the beach at Bridlington with the North Sea/Baltic heading straight for us, so lunch was had and then quickly back to the holiday let.
It was relatively easy to get into the top 50 of this county given the low threshold and the supermarket fayre of Great Newsome and Wold Top, as well as the sometimes, nationwide availability of Atom. Recent great additions have been Bone Machine and I’m very impressed with Bricknell.
A couple of recent orders from Vine & Grain (Beverley) has got me to 9th place in East Yorkshire with 101 ratings - that would’ve been enough to be top about 4 years ago. This is the 21st county for me in terms of total ratings. Not bad, considering it’s one of the smaller ones!
I have 4 beers rated at 4 or more which are as follows.
Bricknell Slavanka Special Reserve 4.3
Atom Gravity Well 4.1
Atom / Old Chimneys Entropic Doom 4.1
Bricknell Slavanka Export 4.0
Still to venture that far south for a holiday! Hull and Lincolnshire would be next county going south along the east coast! Lincolnshire - I’m envisaging a massive vegetable farm?
Grimsby and Cleethorpes may well be good hunting grounds for you, and of course Batemans down in Wainfleet is worth the drive through the cabbage fields to reach it. Lincoln is also lovely city to visit and drink in. Avoid sCUNThorpe though!
