Following a thoroughly interesting D-day trip for a tour of Masters Brewery near Wellington in June 2013 we stopped in a pleasant country pub on the way home for a pint. During that discussion we realised that we'd been inspired and decided to have a go at this brewing caper ourselves - after all, we British have been doing it for thousands of years out of stone pots with no access to the equipmen
t or plethora of information that is freely available to us today. We'd both brewed from home using kits for decades but now we wanted to take things a stage further, create a 'full mash' beer that we could call our own. So we spent several months making twice-weekly, scaled-down 10-litre batches - this taught us a huge amount about flavours from the different grains, hops and yeasts available and also how important mash temperatures and fermenting is to the whole process. In January 2014 we went back to Richard Masters who spent a day with us making beer which filled in many small gaps we'd had in the process that day and had an enjoyable time to boot. He'd taught us enough to produce our first commercial beer and survive until we perfected it. In March 2014 we bought our first 1BBL plant which produces 170 litres at a time which fills four 9-gallon casks. We started supplying Pagan to four local pubs along Chew Valley in August 2014, we're now consolidating our position and concentrating on consistency of quality and supply before shortly expanding to supply Druid as well - other beers will follow in good time.
