Beer and bangers for Anne on visit to Yorkshire brewing champs!
By: JimOldfield
March 13th, 2012
It’ll be beer and bangers for Princess Anne next month – after she personally picked out an award-winning Yorkshire brewery for a visit!
The Princess Royal will stop by Ilkley Brewery when she takes in the West Yorkshire town on April 3, as part of a visit to the county.
And she will launch its new ale, Ilkley Jubilee – specially brewed for her mum’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations this summer.
She singled out the three-year-old brewery as a business she would most like to visit, after it notched up a string of regional and national awards.
Alongside the beer, the Princess also chose to see the spa town’s famed sausage makers and butchers, Lishman’s, who recently won a regional Countryside Alliance award.
The Ilkley Brewery Co. Ltd. was founded in January 2009 by Chris Ives and Stewart Ross – some 90 years after the original Ilkley Brewery, after a take-over by Hammond’s Bradford Brewery Co in the 1920s.
Chris and Stewart invested £70,000 in an 8 BBL plant, with a 4,600 pints-a-week capacity. Within two years, the brewers had moved to new, bigger premises and, with the addition of new plant, taken production to over 32,000 pints a week, as the awards began rolling in.
The Princess will officially unveil the brewery’s latest upgrade – the addition of a sixth fermentation vessel which will increase output to some 40,000 pints a week!
Mr Ross, said: “This is such an incredible honour for everyone here at the brewery, and our families.
“To hear that HRH The Princess Royal was actively involved in choosing the businesses she would like to visit, makes the occasion even more special: we are all immensely looking forward to welcoming her to Ilkley and hope to give her an inspiring and enlightening visit.”
At Lishman’s shop on Leeds Road in the town, the Princess will be the first ever Royal to see the company’s two-time “Champion of Champions” Yorkshire sausages and salami in production… and will leave with a specially prepared hamper!
Read about the meteoric rise of Ilkley Brewery by following our links…
HAND-PUMPED links
www.ilkleybrewery.co.uk
www.ilkleybreweryblog.blogspot.com
www.lishmansonline.co.uk
www.davidlishman.com
