Brewers move up as real ale revolution starts to pull in young drinkers
By: JimOldfield
August 21st, 2012
Breweries across the country are rolling out ambitious expansion plans, as real ale continues to boom – to a new, younger audience.
Sheffield’s award-winning Abbeydale Brewery is increasing production to keep up with the demand for real ale, with younger customers now acquiring the taste.
The brewery has acquired two adjoining units, which will take its output up to 150 barrels a week. It is currently doing 124 barrels – compared with a production of 104 this time last year
Abbeydale co-owner Sue Morton says there has been a surge in the popularity of real ale among the 20-something age range – defying the claims that real ale is only appreciated from middle-age and on.
Launched six years ago, Abbeydale now employs 13 staff.
South Wales’s Otley Brewing Company is also on the march – having doubled the size of its brewing base by buying a new 5,500sq ft unit to meet rising demand for its cask ales and bottled beers.
The new plant – on the Albion Industrial Estate in the valleys village of Cilfynydd – will see more office space, a brewery shop and an in-house bottling facility handling some 1,500 bottles a week.
It will also run public tours and tasting sessions .
And up in Cumbria, Millom’s Hardknott Brewery has secured a £42,000 grant from the Rural Development Programme for England, towards its own ambitious £84,000 expansion.
The project will see the arrival of four more fermenting and conditioning tanks and an automated bottling machine – as well as the creation of two full-time positions, as the brewery seeks to double its turnover.
The new plant will allow Hardknott to increase production from 15 barrels a week to 35 and also to produce 800 bottles of beer an hour, quadrupling its current output of 200.
The brewery has an ambition to be the north’s leading bottled beer producer.
Hand-Pumped links:
www.abbeydalebrewery.co.uk
www.otleybrewing.co.uk
www.brewingawards.org
