When real ale drinkers raised their glasses to toast Folly Ale, the best brew at the Keighley Beer Festival, they probably didn't realise that the first barrels were just rolling out of the brewery.

The beer secured the title only days after its launch - at the event organised by the Keighley and Craven branch of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA). It marked a remarkable debut for the innovative Wharfedale Brewery, based at Hetton, near Skipton, which was set up by businessmen Steve Blizzard and David Aynesworth.

Before its early success, the brewery was already turning heads because it delivers its ales in a specially-adapted 1924 Model-T truck and donates a share of its sales revenue to charity.

So far, the pair have pumped more than £100,000 into the venture, including the conversion of a Dales sheep barn into a brewery and sinking their own 52-metre borehole.

Two full-time employees - brewer Adam Witek and sales, marketing and distribution manager Simon Yeomans - have also been signed up.

American-born Mr Blizzard said: "I started brewing my own beer three years ago when the price of a pint hit £2, which I thought was too much to pay and that I could do better.

"I converted a folly at my home into a mini-brewery - hence the name of the ale - for consumption by family and friends. David was my 'number two taste tester' and he was obviously impressed as he came to me 18 months ago and suggested we turned it into a business.

"Plans were drawn up, put into the pipeline and we started brewing Folly Ale, a traditional 3.8 per cent Yorkshire bitter, on September 15."

Folly has now been followed up with the release of a second, stronger offering, Executioner, a 4.5 per cent dark beer, with a rich mahogany, almost reddish colour.

The barn-to-brewery project involved the installation of a mash tun, wort boiler, heat exchanger, two fermenting vessels, three conditioning tanks, one hot water tank and two recovery tanks. It has a five-barrel capacity - 1,440 pints per brew - with a new brew possible every couple of days.

Mr Witek, a former brewer with John Smith's, Mansfield and Carlsberg, said: "Vital to the process is the fact that we have our own borehole, from which we draw all the water used in our brewing. It is very hard water, containing a lot of calcium, which is ideal for brewing purposes."

Folly Ale has made an impressive debut in free houses from the Yorkshire Dales to Silsden.

And the next stage is to launch bottled Folly and Executioner Ales in November, an initiative being targeted at the regional hospitality and catering sector.

Wharfedale Brewery is shortly to start its own website at www.follyale.com