I’ve been looking forward to touring Yardley Brothers Craft Brewery in Kwai Chung for quite a while.
Yardley Brothers has become one of my favorite breweries over the past few years. They impressed me last year by organizing the Art of Craft beer festival and aside from their core beers (which are great), they are constantly releasing of what I fondly refer to as ‘weird beers’ that have proven to be consistently delicious and surprising. Their Mum’s Rhubarb Crumble was a tipping point for myself and a few other friends as it made us realize that sour beers can actually be pretty awesome!
The brewery tour only happens once a month, on the last Friday and is from 5:30 - 7:30pm. Guests are also required to book a spot and pay ahead of time. Seeing as how the other breweries I’ve toured are generally open every Friday and offer slightly longer hours (Covid issues aside), I was curious what made the Yardley Brothers brewery tour so different… and now I’ll try to explain!
First off, Yardley Brothers’ brewery is quite small. I was surprised to see that they hadn’t expanded since I last visited for a punk rock show a few years ago.
My first thought walking in the door was how incredibly impressive it is that they’re able to achieve the quality and quantity of beers in a relatively small brewery.
They released 37 new different beers in 2020 on top of their core line!
Upon entering we had checked in with Cam, the head of marketing, and he passed us each a glass. There were 6 beers on free flow tap to taste including a few I haven’t seen. One was the Power Station Pilsner, only available at the Lamma Grill. We tasted beers for a bit while the room filled up with about 20 people in total, then Cam split the group into two and we started the tour after a quick top-up.
At this point I realized why the tour only happened once a month.
Our group left the main brewery and walked down one flight of stairs. They had expanded, just in a way I wasn’t expecting! Having tasted the Barrel-Aged Bourbon Marmalade Wheat Sour last weekend, it was a cool experience to see where that beer was born, and see first-hand where and why it tasted as it did.
Luke, the owner/mastermind was waiting in the Barrel Room and we tasted a couple of beers, while having an in-depth discussion about the process, where the barrels came from and future plans for the brewery.
With 65+ barrels ranging from whiskey to maple syrup, this is obviously going to play a major role in new releases to come. This was my favorite part of the tour. We had some awesome beers and had a slightly nerdy but super interesting discussion.
From there we headed back to the main brewery and met with Gordon the head brewer. Gordon walked us through the process and equipment which was a very unique experience. I’m used to seeing big computer automated set ups, whereas Yardley Brothers is much more hands on using a smaller, mostly manually operated top loading mash tun from the OGs of Hong Kong Craft Beer- Typhoon Brewery.
Gordon was nice enough to pour the newly released Berried Alive 3 Milkshake Sour straight from the tank. This was my other highlight.
Double the blueberries, double the raspberries and double the alcohol! It's like the best berry smoothie you’ve ever tasted but with 12% alcohol. So good!
We continued tasting the beers on draft until well after 9pm (maybe 10pm? Things got blurry!), before the team graciously gave us the boot.
It’s obvious these guys are passionate about what they do and they do it extremely well. This was a tour and tasting that was not only a great time, but also a super interesting learning experience for a person interested in beer and brewing.
Book your tour and tasting ahead of time for the last Friday of every month through the Yardley Brothers Facebook page.
@YardleyBrothersBeer
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