Welsh dragon roars as brewers fire up a real ale revolution
By: JimOldfield
June 3rd, 2012
Wales is enjoying its own piece of the worldwide real ale boom – with a 500 per cent increase in independent brewers over the past decade.
Cardiff CAMRA branch secretary Brian Francis told Hand-pumped: “Just 10 years ago there were no more than a dozen breweries in Wales – now we have around 60.
“That’s a tremendous sign of confidence in the future of real ale and a reflection of consumer demand for locally produced quality products, instead of those that the marketing men want to push down our throats.”
Mr Francis added: “Even a major Welsh brewery – Brains – has responded by installing a small brewery within their site, so that smaller runs of esoteric-style beers can be produced under the auspices of Head Brewer Bill Dobson.
“And the newly created Tiny Rebel Brewery at Newport has aspirations for the future employment of 100 people over the next 3 years.
“In the past year, across Wales, I have knowledge of 10 breweries that have been set up or are in the process of being set up.
“We have brew pubs in Llwydcoed (Aberdare), Maesteg, Llantrisant Llanrhidian (Gower) all newly set up.
“On the outskirts of Cardiff, a micro-brewery is about to produce its first beer at the Gwaelod Y Garth Pub – which is already a very popular outlet for quality real ales and a “Highly Commended” pub in CAMRA circles. North Wales is seeing a similar upsurge.
“These new ventures are in the main small brewing kits within Free Houses, supplying the pub and perhaps on request a few others.
“As one licensee installs brewing equipment we have others not far away keeping an eye and wanting to do the same.
“Interest is enhanced by greater experimentation with a new wave of hops from Eastern Europe and the USA. These hops tend to have greater bitterness and character, thus offering the pub goer a greater choice of flavour than ever – something for everyone is how I would describe it.”
He concluded: “So, where the bad news is the rate of closures of pubs generally, the good news is that those pubs that offer their customers a beer menu that’s slightly different, appear to be thriving.
“The consumers are turning their back on mass produced stuff more and more towards locally produced beers and, all told, I think we are looking at a rosy future in terms of the real ale market in Wales.”
Chairman of the Association of Welsh Independent Brewers, Buster Grant, added that despite the recession, beer taxes and cheap supermarket alcohol, the pubs which are investing in cask ales are thriving.
Mr Grant, who is head brewer and managing director at Brecon Brewing said: “It’s still tough out there for pubs.
“But what we are seeing is those that are doing well tend to be doing very well indeed – and almost without fail, tend to be the pubs which specialise in cask beers”.
Tiny Rebel has gone from strength to strength since being launched by Bradley Cummings and his brother-in-law, Gareth Williams, in February this year.
Mr Cummings said: “We’ve had a lot of support from local people and things are going really well”.
Hand-Pumped links:
Tiny Rebel
Cardiff CAMRA:
Brains
Brecon Brewing
