Limited Edition Brew for Booths

Booths, who have 29 stores located in the North West of England, and are well known for their range of beers are having their first beer festival. Running from April 24 – May 21 the festival welcomes 15 guest ales and ciders to the existing range with the addition of their very own specially-brewed beer made by us.

Festival Ale is a limited edition brew of only 6400 bottles, each individually numbered. It’s a refreshing 4% ABV pale ale made with a blend of modern American and traditional English hops. It has an aroma of tropical fruit and lemon zest with orange flavours and a pithy, bitter finish.

Brewed by us and bottled at Wold Top Brewery in Yorkshire, Festival Ale is available for a limited time only, to find your local Booths store click here.

English Beer Breaks 24 Year Record to Win Scots Prize

Head Brewer, Matt Clarke holds aloft the Glasgow cup won by an English brewery for the first time in 24 years.

We broke the Scots stranglehold on Glasgow CAMRA’s annual beer of the year award, with our powerfully hopped NZPA.

“NZPA has been delighting Glasgow beer drinkers for the past year,” said Robin Jones, Glasgow CAMRA chairman. “It’s a delicious drop of hop heaven, a well-deserved winner of Glasgow beer of the year, 2012.”

Matt Clarke, a New Zealander, brewed NZPA to showcase the unique big flavoured hops of his homeland. “It’s a bit different,” he said. “It’s strong, really well hopped and is catching on. The Glasgow drinkers just seem to love it.”

Matt was presented with an engraved trophy and a certificate at JD Wetherspoon pub, The Counting House, in Glasgow.

NZPA – New Zealand Pale Ale is a highly hopped pale ale at 6% abv made using four New Zealand hops and one Kiwi brewer.

The Beer Hall will host Cumbria's Biggest Ever Beer Festival

The brewers’ society has chosen Cumbria (specifically The Beer Hall at Hawkshead Brewery) as the site for its annual North West beer festival in 2013.

It will be the biggest beer festival ever held in Cumbria, will showcase 200 cask beers from up to 80 North Western breweries and will gather more Cumbrian beers from more Cumbrian breweries in one place, than ever before.

SIBA (the Society of Independent Brewers) has given The Beer Hall the contract to host the competition and festival. Alex Brodie (MD of Hawkshead Brewery) said: “SIBA’s decision to move this huge event from Manchester, where it has been for the last 3 years, to Cumbria, is a recognition of the strength and vibrancy of the new brewing industry in Cumbria.”

The Chairman of SIBA, Keith Bott said: “Hawkshead Brewery was chosen to host this event because it has unrivalled facilities to cellar and serve 200 cask beers, properly and has a proven track record with its own iconic beer festivals, which succeed in attracting beer lovers from all over The North. Brewing is a great British manufacturing industry. It is having a renaissance. Cumbria is a fine example of that”

The SIBA North West Beer Festival will run from October 24^th – 27^th.

New Cask Beer - Hoppy Red

The second in our new programme of special brews is out and drinking. The 4.8% red-coloured beer is generously hopped with Cascade, Citra and Simcoe hops. It is a pilot brew, leading to a special hoppy red ale commissioned by JD Wetherspoon for their national Spring Beer Festival. The first one-off special, Green Gold, was released in November and took its name from the Slovenian Valley where all the hops grow.

Cumbrian Business Award Win

Alongside the Taste Cumbria Gold Award we won for NZPA earlier this year, the judges also awarded us with Best Large Producer in Cumbria Life’s Food & Drink Awards at a ceremony held at Kendal College.

It was awarded to us for “delivering outstanding Cumbrian products and business success”.

Local MP Tim Farron said “Cumbria has world class food, produce and businesses. I think that we have such a fantastic calibre of outlets like Hawkshead Brewery…” 

Gold for NZPA

NZPA has won another medal, this time with a Taste Cumbria Gold Award.

It was one of 40 Gold’s given to producers in Cumbria as part of the 2013 Cumbria Life Food & Drink Awards. Around 200 products, across 7 categories (meat, dairy, bread, desserts, condiments, beer & miscellaneous) were judged by a panel in November, with the ‘beer’ category taking 9 Gold awards.

NZPA was described by the judges as “a pale ale abundantly hopped with exotically fruity New Zealand hops”. This is the latest in a string of awards for NZPA, last year it won a Gold medal in the CAMRA Cumbrian Beer of the Year awards and previous to that a Bronze medal at the Brewers Society North region competition 2011. “We’re delighted that judges have recognised the quality of New Zealand’s hops and the skills of our brewing team” said New Zealander, Matt Clarke, Head Brewer (pictured).

Production Increase

We’re pleased to report a 17.5% increase in production in 2012, comprehensively bucking the economic trend.

Production rose to 5,250 barrels (190,000 gallons or 1.5 million pints). This level of growth was made possible by our second major investment in plant and equipment in our ten year life.

Managing Director Alex Brodie said: “It is tough in the beer market at present, with the economic squeeze, the government forcing the price up by beer duty increases, the large number of new breweries and the lack of finance, so we’ve done very well to increase our share. We are still a small brewery and the key for us now is not volume growth, but to solidify our niche position in the North West and concentrate on doing what we do better and better. “

CAMRA Cumbrian Beer of the Year Awards

The Brewing team celebrate our record haul of 7 awards in the CAMRA Cumbrian Beer of the Year awards.

New Whisky Beer Wins Gold

An experiment to age beer in a whisky barrel for six months won judges approval and netted us a gold medal at the North Region Brewers Society competition held in Manchester in October.

Our whisky cask-aged Damson and Vanilla Imperial Stout won the speciality bottled beer category at the annual competition run by SIBA (the Society of Independent Brewers) and continued our winning streak: last year Windermere Pale in cask was overall champion of the competition.

The speciality stout made with Lyth Valley damsons, and hand-bottled after 6 months in an oak whisky cask is the first in a series of three new bottled beers, all of which have been aged in barrels from Bladnoch Distillery in Lowland Scotland.

Alongside the 8.3% abv damson beer, the limited edition collection also includes Imperial Stout 8.3% abv and Brodie’s Prime Reserve 2012 8.5% abv. Each beer has been carefully matured in the brewery’s cellar, during which time the beer grows in character as maturation unlocks flavours in the oak. Only when the unique and complex flavours are deemed perfect are the beers bottled.

The first beer is now for sale at the brewery in The Beer Hall shop. All three will be available to purchase from the shop and online from our web-shop in the next few weeks as soon as they are ready for release.

Although there are only a very limited number of these oak aged beers the gold medal that we have won has given Head Brewer, Matt Clarke, the confidence to crack on with his project of aging more beer in the stock of barrels he has collected from several distilleries so watch out for more specialist releases in the future.

Hawkshead Bitter “Beer of the Year”

Hawkshead Bitter is, for the second year running, one of CAMRA’s “Beers of the Year” as listed in the new 2013 edition of the Good Beer Guide, just published.

It gets the accolade by being a finalist in the Champion Beer of Britain (CBOB) competition. CBOB is judged at the Great British Beer Festival in August, which this year was held at Olympia, London.

Renowned Hawkshead Bitter is sold in the best real ale pubs in The Lakes and North West. It is a favourite among hikers and is described as the perfect thirst quencher after a day on the Fells. It’s low strength 3.7% abv makes it a great session ale.

Our other low strength beer – Windermere Pale is current overall champion beer of SIBA North and was awarded a silver medal at the national championships earlier this year.