A trip to Rooster’s

Posted by on May 24, 2012 in English Beer | No Comments

Knowing when to let go can be very tough for anyone who has started their own business. Some cling on, unwilling to pass on the mantle – or uncertain as to who should be trusted to start writing the next chapter. When it came time for Sean Franklin to step back from Rooster’s Brewery, he wanted the right people to continue the name, and carry on putting out the beers. With that in mind, Sean and his wife Alison approached Ian Fozard of Market Town Taverns – a local businessman with plenty of experience of the company.

Ian’s son Ol happened to be a distinguished brewer – having spent several years at Skipton’s Copper Dragon – and his other son Tom experienced in sales and marketing. The perfect fit then, it seems. Since acquiring the brewery (and freeing Sean and Alison up to emigrate to Canada for the fishing), Roosters have been subtly re-branded and have acquired a 65l test kit to go alongside the main 25bbl brewplant. Other than that, they continue to produce the core range of beers that Sean established back in the day, delivering by hand from his taxi.

I paid a visit to Rooster’s last weekend, as the final day of the European Beer Blogger’s Conference included a trip to their facility in Knaresborough – a really rather lovely old town a short hop from Leeds. After bouncing around the backstreets for a while, we eventually found the brewery – looking like a mini aircraft hangar on an industrial estate. After a short talk by Tom, his brother Ol showed us round, with everything happening on a belt-less conveyor system – dirty casks in the front, clean, filled casks out the back for dispatch.

One of the things I liked most is Rooster’s sense of place. The brothers are (I’m guessing) around 30, but they both realise their market lies in the golden session pale ales that are so popular in Yorkshire. They also both realise that brewing them doesn’t mean they have to be boring, or even similar – their latest is Buckeye, a 3.5% re-working of an old Rooster’s staple. Brewed with Riwaka and Amarillo, they have enough of those rare hops for now, even though the former is about to be confined to NZ for the foreseeable future.

Like many brewers, they unleash the creativity on the test kit – not taking up tankspace for their Monday-Thursday brew schedule (Friday being clean-down day). It was on this kit that Londinium was first produced – a 5.5% coffee porter that is one of the very few dark beers they have brewed (Ol reckoned they are around 99% pale at Rooster’s). Winning an award at its first beer festival, it looks as if they might have to dig out the chocolate malt more often – it’s a cracker. Sweet, balanced, nice coffee linger on the end.

The Fozards have now been running the brewery for just over twelve months – and you get the feeling they are starting to find their feet. Beginning to bottle some of their trial beers in 750ml (such as the fantastic Serlo de Burgh), Ian’s confident they’ll be bottling their core range sometime soon on a more regular basis (under contract). As they continue to work with their test kit whilst producing the hoppy golden beer for the cask market, look for Rooster’s to become extremely well known in Knaresborough, and then up and down the country.



Many thanks to Ian, Ol and Tom for the tour of the brewery and the slap-up lunch. It was a great – and very fitting – way to bring the EBBC to a close. They announced yesterday that they are brewing a collaboration beer with Doug Odell sometime over the summer – without doubt, one to watch out for.

Leave a Reply

*