THIS year we are toasting the 150th anniversary of The Bolton News — and we are inviting everyone to raise a glass filled with a beer brewed to celebrate the landmark year.

Scoop Ale is currently in its fermentation stage at the award-winning Bank Top Brewery in Astley Bridge and will be launched shortly.

And given it’s not every day an ale is created in honour of the town’s newspaper, we have been going behind the scenes to find out exactly what goes into creating a new beer — and whether it could even ‘scoop’ an award.

READ all about it! Scoop Ale will available very soon.

The beer will be on sale at Bank Top Brewery's The Tap in Astley Bridge and The Ale House in Horwich.

It will also be available at the Ukranian Club and other local pubs.

Ian Savage, editor of The Bolton News, said: "We are delighted that Bank Top has agreed to brew a special beer to help us celebrate The Bolton News’ 150th anniversary and now it’s a case of waiting for it to be ready to try out.

“There’s a lot of excitement in the office to see what Scoop tastes like – and as you can imagine, there is no shortage of volunteers to test it!”

There is even a chance this new beer could scoop an award.

Neil Turner, sales manager, said: "You never know, you just don’t know. The thing is certainly with the champion beer of Britain you never know how the beer actually gets there, they can just ring up and say you are in for judging.

"You don’t know what route it took to get to be the champion. It is selected in part by members of CAMRA who have tasted it. They judge beers day in day out."

He added: "Our mild is without a doubt our biggest award winner by a long way."

Neil added: "Scoop is a beer, but it depends if you want to call it a traditional ale because it is brewed in the traditional way.

“I think historically. although we might need our educated expert on this, beers are flavoured with hop whereas ales, which are far more traditional, were flavoured with something else like elderflower or berries.

“We are talking probably around medieval times, when all the women did the brewing. You would have a breakfast ale, lunch ale and evening ale because they didn't drink the water.

"Ale was flavoured with different things other than hops. Traditional ale has hops, there are very few that actually make beer today that don't use hops.

"There is only one that I have come across with any regularity where they put heather in it."

Scoop Ale is the latest special ale brewed by Bank Top. This year every brewer has been given the opportunity to brew their own specials to be sold for two months and they have proved to be very popular.

Neil said: "Specials give us a chance to use new hops and different grains.

"I will be doing one in October, and of course everyone wants to sell more than the last one.

"Jennifer has just done the fourth. They have all been named after different reservoirs.

"The hops I'm getting are from New Zealand, they are extremely rare. If this is popular I may be in trouble because they are also very very expensive," said Neil.

"If this or Scoop does really well you will always have one that does not perform as well at others, and you will drop that one. But we have not changed our standard list for a long time. They all started as an experimental beer. Every time you brew a new beer it is an experiment, you never really know what it is going to be like until it comes out of the barrel and you get to taste it."

Jennifer said: "I have just made a beer – Doe Hey. I used two English hops and I thought it would be a lot mellower on the palate but it is quite sharp.

“It is not what I was expecting, I have never used these hops before."

Brewer Mike Haynes's Dingle was brewed three times because of demand. It was the first recipe he had brewed at Bank Top.

He said: "I used New Zealand hops, it was quite dry. Mine was quite an intense flavour, the kind of beer I like.

"It took me months to pick the hops because there are that many different ones. It is about picking out which combination you want and working out how much to put in to get it how intense you want the flavour. The more you put in the stronger the flavour.

"I was really proud of it.

"All the specials are selling quite well. My beer went up to the Lake District. It is nice when you go in the pub and people are drinking it and asking for it."

Bank Top Brewery also does tours - and take it from someone who spent a day at the brewery . . . it is a fascinating place to visit and well worth it.