Resurgent Real Ale?

The Guardian published an interesting piece in the Life and Style section recently. It discuses the change in image of Real Ale over the last few years and the rise in interest from younger drinkers.

A worthwhile read, though one line in particular caught my eye:

...brewing boring brown bitters for old men.

I'm not sure the sentiment that, a bitter is boring if it is brown, nor old men only drink brown beer, really matches our experience over the years.

But a good article and worth a read. You can find it here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/nov/17/cask-real-ale-beer-sales

THREE FINE BEERS AVAILABLE

As we settle down into the shorter days of autumn, you can now try our third beer ‘Black Ven’, a dark brown porter with a pronounced depth of flavour, enhanced with the blackcurrant fruitiness of the hops. Black Ven completes our initial portfolio of beers sitting alongside our flagship beer ‘Cobb’ and our summer favourite ‘Lyme Gold’.

It’s a long time since beer was made on a commercial scale in Lyme and we are proud to be operating right in the heart of the old part of the town, next to the historic mill

Read more about our beers here.

Update on Monday, November 15, 2010 at 10:22PM by Julian

Black Ven is proving to be a very popular Autumn/Winter choice.

The Town Mill Brewery

Our brewery has a four barrel brew length (the amount of beer we can brew in one go). This amounts to about 1,000 pints or 14 firkins (the standard cask you see being used in most pubs). The arrangement of tanks is the classical one: hot liquor tank, mash tun, wort kettle (or copper) and fermenting vessels. These are made of stainless steel. Our production limit is a consequence of the space available (about 36m²). We have two fermenting vessels so, in practice, we can brew up to twice a week.

Our brewing process is the same as that used by most microbreweries. We use no additives with our ingredients but we do use finings to clear the beer. Cobb bitter is made using only English grown hops, however our other beers contain hops from further afield.

 

Brewery History

Before renovation the brewery looked like this.

The building had formally housed the batteries that kept Lyme Regis's electricity supply going during the night

The Brewery Today

We have the River Lym running beneath the brewery, so may be the only brewery in England to be situated over water.