Real ale is a natural product brewed using traditional ingredients (barley, yeast,hops and water)

It is left to mature in the cask or container from which it is served.

This process is called secondary fermentation. It is this process which makes real ale unique amongst beers and develops the wonderful tastes and aromas which processed beers can never provide.

For more information on real ale visit

The Campaign for Real Ale web-site below.

Click here to visit their website

Hops are what make our beers a slightly alcoholic herbal drink. They are the cultivated flowers of the Humulus Lupulus plant and are used for preserving and flavouring beer. Although they are a relatively minor ingredient in beer, in terms of weight, they add bitterness to balance malt sweetness.

A hop is a member of the Cannabacea family, traditionally used for relaxation, sedation, and to treat insomnia in hop pillows, hop teas and best of all in beer.

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Barley is a cereal grain. It is allowed to germinate and dried in a process called malting.It is the prime ingredient in 'wort', the liquid that is fermented into beer.

The malting process starts by soaking the grain, causing it to begin to germinate. Small rootlets sprout and the grain is then kiln-dried, roasted and crushed.

We allow our beer to brew out completely in the fermentation tank. This means that the yeast has converted all the available brewing sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide. We then add finings which cause most of the yeast to clump together and sink to the bottom of the beer.

1st drop. We then drop the beer off the yeast and put it in a second tank where it is chilled. As the beer cools down proteins come out of solution and we add different finings to cause the proteins to settle at the bottom of the tank.

2nd drop. We then drop the beer off the protein and put it in a third tank where it is mixed with a little priming sugar.

3rd drop. The beer is then dropped into bottles.

The bottles are capped and put in a warm place causing the small amount of yeast that is left to wake up and ferment with the sugar. This makes carbon dioxide which is trapped in the bottle, to be absorbed by the beer, giving it its condition or sparkle.

Fermentation is the term for the natural process of yeast consuming sugar to make alcohol. The Original Gravity (O.G.) is a measure of the amount of sugar in the wort at the beginning of the fermentation and the Final Gravity (F.G.) a measure of the sugar left at the end. From the amount of sugar consumed the amount of alcohol produced can be calculated.

For each brew we pitch a new pack of Nottingham Ale Yeast. This ensures that a vigorous fermentation is quick to start and that a high proportion of the sugar is consumed producing quite dry beers.

The sugars in our beers come from malted barley. The simple sugars ferment out quickly but the sugars with more complex molecules do not ferment easily and so are left in the beer. In stronger beers there are more of these unfermented sugars and this is what gives them their sweetness.

Our latest beer, Light East Kent Goldings, has an O.G. of 1032 and an F.G. of 1003.4 giving a light dry beer of 3.7%. The American Pale Ale is a stronger, fuller bodied beer of 8.1%. It had an O.G. of 1072 and an F.G. of 1010.

We display the gravities on the labels and so you can see how sweet and strong the beer is.