Heritage Brewing

There still remains a great wealth of brewing information hidden around the UK. Despite the fact that during the great beer defenestrations of the 1960s and 70s, when members of the so-called ‘Big Six’ (Allied Breweries, Bass Charrington, Courage, Scottish & Newcastle, Whitbread and Watney Mann) bought up family owned regional breweries, closed them down and quite often let their recipes end up in skips, there are still plenty of records available to remind us of what our grandfathers and grandmothers enjoyed on their (frequent) visits to the public house.

This serendipity of surfing the mash tuns and hop backs of time is exactly what gives Heritage Brewing its mission in life. For under the careful eye of veteran master brewer Steve Wellington, brewing history is brought back to life by recreating recipes from the past. To make things even more historical, the brewery is based at the National Brewery Centre in Burton-upon-Trent, where every particle of air you breathe seems to have the soul of beer within. Perhaps a Charrington IPA which cockneys used to enjoy with a pork pie and a spot of banter, while if you’re very lucky you might pick up a re-brew of the classic imperial stout P2. Sometimes, it pays to look backwards while going forwards.