Brewery News

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Monks restore historic brewing tradition

Monks at Mount St Bernard Abbey in Charnwood, Leicestershire, have brewed the first monastic beer since the Reformation. The abbey is a Trappist one and has strong links with the monastic breweries in Belgium but the beer is described as an "English Trappist Ale" using all English ingredients. The beer is on sale commercially and the income will help the monks' maintain the abbey and also help fund their charitable work

Added: Wednesday, June 27th 2018

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Big Beer moves in on Beavertown

Beavertown Brewery in North London has received a £40 million investment from Heineken in return for a major share in the company. This will allow founder Logan Plant (pictured) to build a new 450,000 hectolitre brewery. But will Heineken end up the sole owner of Beavertown? The omens are not good as "Big Beer" moves in on the craft sector in both the United States and the UK

Added: Saturday, June 23rd 2018

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Cask is king at new Bath Ales brewery

Bath Ales, owned since 2016 by St Austell of Cornwall, has opened a new £5 million brewhouse where both ales and lager can be produced. A new lager called Sulis has been launched but 50% of the annual 50,000-barrel production is in cask form and includes the flagship Gem Ale and a new West Coast IPA, Lansdown. Pictured: senior brewer Darren James who has been with Bath Ales for more than 15 years

Added: Thursday, May 17th 2018

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Museum traces turbulent Turkish brewing

A new brewery museum in Izmir traces the history -- sometimes turbulent -- of brewing in Turkey. The first commercial breweries didn't open until the last years of the Ottoman empire. Under the Turkish Republic there were periods of state ownership. The museum shows how the first breweries -- such as Bomonti in Constantinople (pictured) -- moved from ale to lager brewing. Today, the biggest brewery, Efes, is planning its own small museum in Izmir.

Added: Sunday, May 13th 2018

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Wells gets go-ahead for new brewery

Bedford family brewer Charles Wells, who sold the Eagle Brewery to Marston's in 2017, has been given the green light by the local council to build a new plant at Fairhill close to the A6. The 30,000 hectolitre plant will produce the current range of Wells' beers along with new beers and collaborative brews with other companies

Added: Thursday, May 3rd 2018

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Still a Rebel but no longer Tiny

Bradley Cummings (right) and Gareth Williams sprang to fame in 2015 when their beer Cwtch -- Welsh for "cuddle" -- won the Champion Beer of Britain award. Their Tiny Rebel brewery in Newport started life in a garage but it's now a substantial business, exporting all round the world and planning further expansion

Added: Wednesday, April 4th 2018

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Three cheers for Britain's family brewers

With the spotlight turned on small craft brewers, beer lovers tend to forget that large amount of cask beer are produced by the 47 family brewers that have survived the turmoil of the late 20th century. Arkells of Swindon (pictured) is celebrating 175 years of brewing in 2018 and the likes of Shepherd Neame, Harvey's and McMullen are even older. They deserve greater support and admiration

Added: Monday, March 12th 2018

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Greek court blow for Heineken

The Greek Public Prosecutor has dismissed claims by Heineken's subsidiary Athenian Brewery against the independent Macedonian Thrace Brewery for perjury as "totally false" and filed with "malicious abuse". The case is part of a long-running battle between MTB and the Heineken subsidiary over market abuse in Greece.

Added: Monday, March 5th 2018

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Meet the Milton Keynes beer dons

Milton Keynes was a small village in Buckinghamshire until the 1960s when it was designated a New Town. It lacked a brewing heritage but that is being developed now thanks to new small breweries such as Concrete Cow and Hornes and two beer shops cum micro pubs in Wolverton and Stony Stratford. Pictured: Dan Bonner at Concrete Cow

Added: Monday, February 26th 2018

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Dark Star: can we look on the bright side?

Fuller's claims it has "joined forces" with Dark Star but in truth the big London brewer has bought the Sussex independent outright. But it's a different acquisition to Gales of Hampshire in 2005, a run down brewery its owners were desperate to sell. Fuller's says it will keep Dark Star open and will expand sales at home and abroad and managing director James Cuthbertson (pictured) stays in post

Added: Wednesday, February 21st 2018