One of the most successful has been Gosport’s Oakleaf brewery, which has just secured its first overseas export order – sending three pallets of Hole Hearted Ale to Singapore – and is now set to move to bigger premises.

Managing director David Pickersgill said: ‘I’d say we’ve seen an upsurge. We’ve got into supermarkets quite a lot in recent years with Waitrose, Asda, and we’re on the list for the Co-op, but haven’t had any orders yet.

‘The big change is that when we started off we didn’t do bottles. We set it up to sell cask ale to pubs. Unfortunately, that’s now slowing. Ale’s still a small part of the overall market, but it’s having a bit of a resurgence.’

A former sergeant in the Royal Corps of Signals, Mr Pickersgill founded the brewery in 2000 with his chemist graduate son-in-law, and now shares the small, 2,500sq ft industrial park facility with seven fermentation vats and eight members of staff.

But with turnover growing at around 15 per cent, to an expected £400,000 by April, the business is now set to relocate to a more spacious building in Priddy’s Hard.

Julian Grocock, chief executive of the Society of Independent Brewers, said: ‘I think the number of independent brewers has roughly doubled in the last 10 years. Whether they all stay in business in the current climate remains to be seen.

‘Thirty years ago in Hampshire there were a couple of large Whitbread breweries, it was basically dying out. There was a time all brewing was natural, unpastuerised and unfiltered. In the UK the whole tradition is beginning to come back. It’s like what do you prefer? Steak or hamburger?’

Taken from: www.portsmouth.co.uk
By: Adam Kula