Brass Castle Brewery Taphouse, Malton

This is a small brewery bar located in a shop-style unit on a busy junction right in the heart of Malton. You enter into a pleasant front bar area with rustic floorboards, a couple of brightly coloured lintels across an otherwise plain ceiling, and a mix of bare brick and neutral painted walls. The servery is directly opposite the front door and has a quaint little bar counter topped with what appeared to be a couple of old railway sleepers or something similar. The bar back is essentially just a small shelving unit hung from the bare brick rear wall, with the keg taps on a font to one side. To the left of the room, some fridges appear to be filled with various Brass Castle bottles and cans, available to either drink in or takeaway, and on top of the fridges, various certificates and awards are displayed, attesting to the brewery’s success in the few years since its establishment in 2014. One high shelf with bar stools runs under the front window on the left side, whilst a long L-shaped bench occupies the front right corner of the room, serving a low table underneath a wall lined with pump clips. One further low table with metal chairs beneath an unused TV screen rounds out the seating in this front room, but things open out to the rear right, where a few high tables and stools can be found in front of walls clad with corrugated iron, from which various bits of brewery merchandise have been hung. A door back here leads out to a rear yard that looks like a bit of a suntrap, although I didn’t venture out there, as a forklift was busy unloading something or other and I figured I’d only end up getting in the way. It’s unclear if the TV screens get much, or indeed any, use, but a decent soundtrack was bubbling away in the background unobtrusively as various customers came and went with their take-out orders, shortly after opening time. There were three cask options available when I arrived at opening time on a Tuesday afternoon – Brass Castle Northern Blonde and Session Mini-IPA, plus a guest of Ossett White Rat – along with three or four craft keg options poured from the aforementioned font on the bar back. I gave the Session Mini-IPA a try and thought it was a decent enough example of a lower strength IPA, kept in good condition and served to me by one of the three very friendly and knowledgeable members of staff who invested a lot of time in talking numerous customers through their beer selection. I think this place worked pretty well as somewhere to showcase Brass Castle beers and I certainly found it a considerable improvement on the usual industrial estate/railway arch taprooms that most breweries seem to operate out of these days. My main issue is that it felt far more like a bottle shop than a proper pub, with customers coming and going throughout my time here, although it may well start feeling a bit more pub-like once a crowd starts to build and off-sales dwindle later in the day. Definitely worth a look if you find yourself in town.

Visiting a brewery's tap can give some idea of the type of people they think will enjoy their beers. The cafe-bar ambience, blonde wood and reclaimed (or is it distressed) timber, not to mention the loud music here suggest that they didn't necessarily have me in mind; though hearing A Town Called Malice (which is often played at Luton Town home games, for some reason) had me tapping my foot. There are two hand pumps but only the underwhelming "session IPA" was on, and not in top nick. Perhaps I should have overridden my prejudice against kegged beers; there are six keg fonts sticking through a panel on the back wall, and a number of beers in aluminium cans in the chiller to the left of the bar counter (I took a couple with me for later). I find Brass Castle beers a bit hit and miss, but this is probably more a matter of taste than quality. Cask beers are £3.50 a pint, with keg at £4, and cans £2.50 for 33cl.