Sunday, March 8, 2009

White Park Brewery in Bedfordshire - Make a refreshing stop at this unique brewery on your next visit to England!


"A Bedfordshire based brewery with a passion for all things natural and wholesome. The brewery is sited in a farm courtyard barn and run by a team of enthusiastic brewers! The name of the brewery evolves from the owner's love of keeping rare breed animals, including White Park cattle, an ancient Britsh breed famed for its good eating - especially when fed spent malt from a brewery! Good eating of course goes hand in hand with a great pint..."



It is always interesting to find new web sites of other breeders of both polled British White and horned White Park cattle in the UK.  Recently, Alan Kelly of the White Park Brewery in  Bedfordshire very kindly contacted me to let me know of a quite unfortunate spelling error on one of my pages.  I most appreciated his taking the time to do that!

Alan has quite an interesting operation, and one that I suspect is a quite natural fit.  Follow the link in the title above to Alan's web site and your mouth will water for a taste of his various White Park ales and porters, as well as a taste of his rare White Park beef fed 'spent malt' -- no doubt that makes for some uniquely flavorful beef.  
Should I be so fortunate as to make another trip to the UK in the coming years, I plan on adding a stop at the White Park Brewery to my itinerary.  Certainly memorable from my prior visit was looking forward at each new stop to trying the local brew in a colorful pub.  Having a pint and some good conversation seemed the most natural thing in the world there, and I swear I think English brew is actually healthy.  

I encourage everyone to have a look at the White Park Brewery web site. They have a very nice herd of White Park cows, and it is well worth noting that in this herd the pedigree cattle have lyric shaped horns that are tipped in black, which is consistent with old descriptions of the original horned 'milch white' Park cattle of old.

You will also find photos of White Park 'cross' animals, and sometimes the black tipped horn comes through, and sometimes not. But, of the photos of crossbred calves I looked at, the White Park color pattern, excepting horn tip color, dominated on the cross. The photo above is a White Park 'cross' female that did retain classic Park markings, including black tipped lyric shaped horns. She's quite a nice looking girl.

The size of the Brewery's White Park cattle appear to be fairly moderate, nothing of an extreme nature struck my eye. And of course the Shetland cattle, which the Brewery has a small herd of as well, are very moderate to small framed cattle.

Cheers to Alan Kelly and the White Park Brewery!