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Harviestoun Brewery -
Scotland Harviestoun Brewery is hard to find down a farm track near Dollar, Clackmannanshire in Scotland amongst all other trappings of a farm is a 200 year old stone building which was once a dairy. There Ken Brooker formerly with Ford in Dagenham established Harviestoun Brewery in 1985. Ken is a self taught brewer from Dagenham in Essex and moved north 20 years ago when Ford made him the area manager in Scotland. Like many others Ken Brooker started brewing as a hobby in his garage at home. It later became his full time occupation when he set up brewing with his friend and fellow brewing enthusiast Eric Harris. With just an £8,000 budget and the building having no windows, water or gas they put the brewery together themselves from a number of sources. Then in 1991 a new custom-built plant with a 10 barrel brew length was installed. The first brew was called Harviestoun Real Ale and at that time they didn’t envisage brewing anything else. The Brewery still uses untreated natural spring water from the local Ochill hills. In 2002 work will begin on a new brewery site in the nearby village of Alva, when completed it will dwarf the present 504 gallons a day probably producing five times as much. Ken and his staff produce five beers for sale in pubs, plus a monthly special, in December it will be Good King Legless a 4.5% favourite. Four bottled beers are also available courtesy of the Belhaven bottling plant and are sold throughout Britain. One of the bottled beers available through Tesco Stores is Old Engine Oil. Which is a near-black brew with a silky-smooth rummy aroma and a slight suggestion of the darkest toffee. It is made from pale malt, roasted barley and malted oats. Old Engine Oil is well hopped with the sweetish variety Galena from Washington State, Worchester Fuggles and East Kent Goldings. The PG (present gravity) of Old Engine Oil is unusually high. This is because Ken Brooker wanted to produce a beer that had the character of a barley wine, lots of mouthfeel and thickness but with only 6 % ABV, rather than the more normal barley wine ABV of about 8.5 %. He has used a high mash temperature to give the required wort profile. The trick apparently is to balance this sweetness with the hop bitterness and acrid flavours from the roast barley. The biggest seller is Bitter and Twisted at 3.8%, which is available in cask and bottle and is a former Champion Beer of Scotland winner. Another favourite traditional ale is Schiehallion, which won the Speciality Beers Gold Medal at the 1996, 1997 and 1999 Great British Beer festival at Olympia and silver award this year. Schiehallion is described in CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide as a 4.8% Scottish cask lager, brewed using lager yeast and Hersbrucker hops. It has a fruity aroma, with malt and hops giving a taste of malt and bitter with a floral hoppiness and a bittersweet finish. If you or your friend is a lager drinker this is an excellent introduction to real ale and is always popular at beer festivals. Unaccredited Hill's Cromford Brewery - Cromford,
Matlock. Local breweries in our CAMRA area have been the topic of several past articles of INN-Spire. The final brewery to be covered is Hill’s of Cromford. It is claimed that the brewery was founded around 1825, and was situated at the Greyhound Inn (now Hotel), which still stands on the Market Place in Cromford. The inn had been built in 1778 by Richard Arkwright, founder of the thriving cotton mills in the village. There is no proof of brewing on the site from these early days, however, as most pubs of the time brewed their own ale, advertising the fact would not have been important. Matthew Hill first appears in a trade directory in 1881 as licensee of the Greyhound. The business must have flourished, as by 1891 the brewery had moved to a new site. Kelly’s directory of that year noted that the brewery of Matthew Hill formed part of the original historic mills established by Sir Richard Arkwright. The mill had closed in 1890 after being destroyed by fire, the remaining buildings leased by the brewery. The brewer at this time was Frederick George Carter. Company status soon followed, the concern was registered to acquire the business of Matthew Hill. A directory of 1899 records the business as Hill’s Cromford Brewery Co Ltd, “proprietors of Hill’s Chain ale & stout in cask and bottle”. Their trade mark which appeared on bottle labels was a group of hills ringed by chain links, overprinted with the slogan “Strength”. This theme being very similar to Brampton Brewery’s “Health & Strength” slogan. As all breweries of the time, Hill’s suffered many losses of tied houses during the early part of the century. Many of these were as a result of new legislation known as the Compensation Act, where the Police could close several pubs a year with compensation paid from a levy on all licensed premises. The Crown at Parrish was one such loss in 1907. The combination of such pressures together with dilapidated brewing plant resulted in Hill’s approach to Offilers brewery of Derby in 1911, with a view to them buying the concern. Offilers however, declined to buy. The situation became much worse and the company went into receivership. Offilers bought the brewery from the receiver as a going concern for £7250, with the aid of a £5000 bank loan. The purchase price included mortgages of £2550 presumably for tied houses acquired. The deal was accepted by Mr Jaffrey on behalf of the Hill’s brewery, and Offilers assumed control on 4th March 1914. The brewery plant was in such poor condition that the boiler was condemned by the firms insurers. In April 1914 it was planned to obtain a replacement from Wards of Sheffield, but this apparently never happened. This must have marked the end of brewing. In December 1914, Mr Key of Via Gellia colour works took over the lease of the buildings for a five year period. Thereafter Offilers sub-leased a portion of the site from the colour works, for beer storage and distribution depot. Deliveries would have been by horse drawn dray at this time, until 1924 when a new Ford lorry was purchased for this purpose. The depot remained in operation until the late 1930’s, the exact close date though is not known. The brewery building was destroyed by fire in 1960, however, the foundations are still visible on the mill site. Hill’s small estate was known to include: the
Miners Standard and the Angel, Winster; Devonshire Hotel, Matlock Bath and
Old Harrow, Great Longstone. Other pubs believed to have been transferred to
Offilers include: the High Peak Harriers, Biggin; Duke of York, Elton; Yew
Tree, Holloway; Lillies Inn, Ible; Duke of Many thanks to John Arguile of Derby CAMRA for sharing his notes on Hills brewery, Doreen Buxton and to Glynn Waite for the loan of various artefacts from the brewery. John Hirst This webpage was last updated on Sunday, 02 September 2007 |
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