The West Berkshire Brewery has announced details of a new £3m custom-built, brewery capable of increasing their brewing capacity ten-fold and the opening of its first urban pub, Shillibeer’s in Islington, London.
The new brewery will be situated in a former dairy just a few hundred yards from the current site and will feature state-of-the art equipment capable of creating a vast range of beer styles. It will also allow West Berkshire Brewery to provide packaging facilities for other breweries and includes plans to include a shop, complete with bar and beer garden, along with the provision of public brewery tours.
Shillibeer’s will allow the brewery to showcase its traditional cask ales, alongside the new craft beers from its Renegade Brewery range accompanied by a new food menu to pair with selected beers.
Chairman, David Bruce, commented: “This is a real turning point for us at West Berkshire Brewery. We are thrilled to have secured such a fantastic site in one of London’s most exciting areas for our first pub.”
We’re just as excited to have signed an agreement for our new brewery. We have a fabulous brewing team who are full of ideas and our new equipment will enable them to let their creativity loose. It also means that we can significantly increase our production, allowing us to spread our wings further than our current distribution heartland; it’s truly an exciting time.”
The new brewing equipment from CFT, based in Parma, Italy, is a three-vessel brewery that will enable the brew team to increase the current range of beer styles, while a fully automated and flexible packaging line will be able to pack 7,000 bottles or 12,000 cans per hour.
The deals have been signed during the company’s crowdfunding campaign, via both the Asset Match and Seedrs platforms, which aims to raise £1.5m to help to fund the new initiatives. The new brewery and packaging line is expected to be delivered in December 2016 and operational from early 2017.