Volunteers at the Ealing Beer Festival in July who opted to go on the thank you outing to Gloucestershire on 18 October had a thoroughly enjoyable time. It could have been very different as about an hour after the coach left Ealing it began to lose power on the inclines on the M4. Fortunately, the driver was able to keep the vehicle going and we arrived at the first stop, Wickwar Brewery in Wickwar, at about 11.15 as planned.
We had gone to the brewery to present a certificate for Station Porter being voted the beer of the festival. During the journey to the brewery it was realised that this would not be possible as all that had been brought was the frame. Fortunately, the owner and head brewer accepted an empty frame in very good stead. Station Porter is one of the few porters to be brewed all the year round, was the Supreme Champion Winter Beer of Britain 2008, and was awarded bronze for being third in the Supreme Champion Beer of Britain 2008 at the Great British Beer Festival.
The group was warmly welcomed to the brewery by Ray Penny, the owner, and very generously everyone was given as much beer as they wanted to drink. To start with, everyone was given a pint of their top-selling beer, Brand Oak Bitter, known as BOB, and after that Cotswold Way and their current seasonal beer, Autumn Ale were made available.
Ray gave a brief talk about the brewery and its history. When he proposed setting the brewery up quite a number of formal objections were made, but when it was realised that it had been a brewery in the past they were easily over-ruled.
Wickwar Brewery was established by Ray in 1990 as a ten-barrel plant in the cooper’s shop of Arnold Perrett Brewery, which ceased trading in 1924. Eleven years later he acquired the brewery premises over the road, that had been used as a cider factory until 1969, and in 2004 began brewing there. The old cooper’s shop is now the brewery shop and it was there that the group went to first.
Philip Downes, who used to be the head brewer at Ridley’s and joined the company in 2005, took the group on a very interesting tour around the brewery. It is now a 50-barrel plant that produces 150 to 175 barrels of beer a week. It is anticipated that, despite the recession, that will shortly increase as there is, unsurprisingly, a big demand for their beers. They certainly have room to expand: the vessels they use take up only a fraction of the space they have available.
It had been planned to leave the brewery at one o’clock, but we were so well looked after, and with all that wonderful beer to drink, we were about 45 minutes late leaving.
We then went to three excellent pubs, all of which had a good range of real ales from micro-breweries. We started with CAMRA’s national pub of the year, the Old Spot in Dursley. It dates from 1776 and was named after the Gloucestershire Old Spot Pig and a porcine theme is discernible amongst other brewery memorabilia.
As we left the Old Spot we changed coaches. It was obviously sensible of the coach firm to send another vehicle to take us back, but unfortunately the one they sent did not have a toilet in it. From the Old Spot we went to the Old Crown in Uley, an attractive seventeenth-century coaching inn.
Our last stop was at the Beaufort Arms in Hawkesbury Upton, a seventeenth-century Grade II listed building that contains a plethora of old brewery and local memorabilia. This was the only one of the three pubs that had any Wickwar beer, although the Old Spot often has some.
Sadly, we had to leave around 6.30 for the journey home. I think anyone on the trip would have been very happy to have stayed far longer in any of the pubs.
Ray is hoping it will not be too long before Wickwar beers are available in London. If he manages to pull it off he will need to expand his business because I am sure many people will make a beeline for the places that sell them.
Brian Lawrence - November 2008
