Kent Brewery - the making of a brewery part 5

A lot has happened since my last blog: The Council Planning Committee made their decision and the brewery is almost ready to brew - but not on the original site. Unfortunately (at the time) the Committee’s decision was to reject the application. Although the Planning Officer and other agencies (including the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the Highways Agency) were all in favour of the application, the elected officers took a different view. Our view has always been, and remains, that we were by far the most environmentally acceptable option for the farm, and that we would have had no greater impact on the area than the present activity. But, although we could probably have won on appeal, we now decided that it was better to move on to more congenial surroundings.

A second site, that we had previously visited, had always been top of our Plan B list. We had only rejected it on the basis of a few minor issues, and so it was time to revisit. The site has considerable potential and, in the light of the last few months, we can now see that it has far better long term prospects. The locals are overjoyed by what we are planning (on present evidence anyway) and we look forward to working with them to benefit the village community. Our beers are now constantly available at the local pub, the Nevill Bull in Birling, where we have already delivered a ‘Meet the Brewer’ session to let locals know more about our plans.

Back at the brewery site, the tanks have arrived and been hoisted into place. They are presently being lined with cooling jackets and steel cladding and the pipework is being constructed. Within a few days everything should come together and those pipes will start flowing with delicious beer. So we now enter the final chapter in the story of ‘the making of a brewery’. The brewery is finally ‘made’ and we now move into full production. We cannot wait…