Bold as brass for vegan brewer

It would be a culture shock for most people to move from a 45th floor apartment in New York to the garage of a house in Pocklington.

But that’s just what East Yorkshire’s first vegan beer-brewer Phil Saltonstall has recently done.

Phil and his wife Harriet both come from Beverley, where they met and married. He joined the RAF and she the United Nations.

Her job took her to New York and Phil went with her as they set up home in one of Manhattan’s most salubrious high-rises.

Harriet’s days were filled with the UN. Phil took up a job with a Princeton-based micro brewery.

“I’d always been a keen home brewer,” he says. “But what I learnt at that brewery in the States took my knowledge to a whole new level.”

America has discovered that beer does not have to be Budweiser or other big brands. Boutique ales from small and micro breweries are now flourishing.

They sell their wares in dedicated bars, through off-sales and, importantly, on the internet.

It’s most popular in New York and throughout California but it’s a business model that Phil thought could be applied in the UK.

When Harriet’s New York UN placement came to an end the couple returned to East Yorkshire and Phil took a job with the Bridlington coast guard.

When they started looking for a house they chose one which could accommodate enough equipment for Phil to take his brewing hobby up a gear.

The garage and basement were converted and Brass Castle Brewery – named after the street on which they live – now produces 228 pints of three different ales per week.

A planned business launch at Pocklington’s beer festival Pocktoberfest had to be brought forward as word of the beer spread on the social networks.

In what is a growing trend, Brass Castle’s Twitter and Facebook streams created an unexpectedly expectant audience for a new beer which was still to be launched.

So Phil sold his first barrel of “Cliffhanger”, a 3.8 percent golden ale at a local beer festival in early September.

Then, a couple of weeks later, another of his products, Bad Kitty vanilla porter, won beer of the festival at the York Beer and Cider Festival. Since then the phone hasn’t stopped ringing.

Phil and Harriet are both vegan and so is their beer.

Phil says, “Most people don’t realise that animal products are used in beer production, but almost all brewers use them during the filtering process to control the ‘lace’ of the head or clarity of a pint.”

Phil wants his ales to compete on an equal footing with traditionally-brewed beers to show that the use of animal products is by no means essential to the production process.

Phil thinks his canny use of social networking sites offers a business model for other small and cottage producers.

Once the potential of the internet is grasped, anyone can sell their product across the globe using little more than an iPhone.

The Americans drink in bars and at home, as do we, but they also buy “carry-outs”.

Few places (the Jug & Bottle deli in Bubwith is one exception) offer that service here.

Ailing pubs, Phil believes, could expand by this means into into real ale and cider off-sales.

Maybe a lifeboat man working from his cellar has found the key that opens up a new, perhaps more civilised, local drinking culture.