Looking back

I can’t believe it’s nearly 10 years since we started planning our microbrewery. Thought it was about time to have a little review of how far we’ve come!

Our Own Cumbrian Pub

We’ve been in the Spinners Arms in Cummersdale since June 2007. We bought the pub 18 months before a recession kicked in and 6 months before the smoking ban – the smoking ban didn’t really affect us but the recession did!! We spent a number of years trying different things to bring people in and keep the pub thriving. It all culminated in the Carlisle Brewing Co.

Alain & I have been real ale drinkers pretty much all our lives. We’ve planned holidays and socialising around finding real ale pubs and beer festivals. So when we took on our own pub, it was natural for us to look at the real ale offering and ramp it up somewhat – we spent 5 years having our own real ale festival, increasing the number of handpulls on the bar slowly as our reputation grew. It was a matter of pride to keep the beer in as good a condition as we could and to rotate beers from around Cumbria and sourcing national favourites too! We’ve been Solway CAMRA Pub of the Season 3 times so think we’ve done something right!

Our Own Cumbrian Microbrewery

Given that pubs were changing and wet led village ones in particular - we’d been looking at ways to diversify for some time. A few different factors fell into place and we made the decision that the way forward for us was to set up our own microbrewery in outbuildings at the pub. It seemed like a natural progression from drinking it and selling it! Alain read voraciously and sent himself off on a Brewlab training course, we sourced funding and purchased a 2.5 barrel kit from Oban Ales, specially made to fit into the very tight space we had – anyone who knows the Spinners will know how little area the pub sits on. We took down walls, added in doors & power and with a bit of brute force and willpower started brewing.

Alain already had an idea of the type of beer he wanted to produce and our first beer, Yan, went on our bar in September 2013. We still brew that beer today with a few tweaks under the name, Flaxen. A stout came next and then our third beer, Spun Gold, was produced – we were so chuffed to win the Solway Camra Beer Festival Beer of the Year for that – it really spurred us on and encouraged us that we might be doing the right thing after all.

Expansion

We carried on brewing, mainly for the Spinners, but also started supplying a few other pubs locally. We started to struggle for space and capacity quite quickly so made the decision to move the brewery out of the pub in 2015. We took over a unit on Kingstown Industrial Estate and replaced the kit with a 10 barrel plant.

We spent nearly 5 months waiting for the kit to be manufactured, removing layer upon layer of tiles in the unit we were renting, getting drainage installed and generally getting dusty every single day. The day it all arrived and was set up was unbelievably fantastic – all these shiny stainless tanks appearing.

Bad times

It was all go until it all stopped when the floods hit Cumbria. We’d only just got going, were starting to find new customers and starting to grow but although we were one of the lucky ones that didn’t end up under water, the majority of our customers did – we were getting reports of casks bobbing about in cellars full of water. It was heartbreaking. There were 2 knock on effects – one: new customers were low on the ground as everyone just pulled their horns in and two: all hospitality accommodation was taken up by people flooded out of their house so tourism was all but non-existent. We picked ourselves up and carried on but it was a lot slower going that originally intended.

We’ve had a number of ups and downs, which as a small business can cause a lot of intense feelings! We’ve had to deal with illness and bereavements, which certainly caused business interruptions from time to time and then there was covid (I think I’ll leave that one for a separate post!!) – I think it’s enough to say we’ve definitely lived through interesting times.

Good times

Through all of this though, we have had some cracking good times, from seeing our beer in pubs I used to frequent in my early drinking days to being on the bar permanently at the Wasdale Head Inn, from seeing our Spun Gold in print in a cracking series of crime novels to meeting the Hairy Bikers. We’ve met fantastic landlords, had our beer at the Racecourse, the Castle, the Cathedral, Brunton Park and the Cumberland Show. I’ve been in more Cumbrian pubs than I’ve ever been in in my life and they’re all absolutely amazing.

Love Real Ale

We get to do something we love and enjoy every day (apart from cleaning days – no-one like those!). It’s a brilliant reason for research and development (ahem). We’ve been able to produce a growing number of new recipes and Alain still gets the opportunity to play with new hop varieties. We have fantastic support from the regulars at the Spinners, to customers ordering bottles online, to landlords ordering beer for their bars but also from our suppliers and local companies and we are very grateful for all of that.

There are a growing number of microbreweries in Cumbria and we are so proud to be included in that number and very proud to be still brewing nearly 10 years in. We’re grateful that we have one of the best jobs in the world, that we get to raise a glass of our beer on a regular basis and that it still makes us smile!