The Hogs Back brewery is celebrating its continued success story today having just racked its 4,000th brew since the brewery’s launch 17 years ago. In total the brewery has now brewed and sold over 35,000,0000 pints of its fine ales to drinkers across Southern England, establishing itself as a much loved Taste of The South.

Mo Zeiher, the Head Brewer said “Not in our wildest dreams could we have hoped to achieve this milestone back when we started. We just wanted to brew ale in the traditional way which at the time was a dying craft as the big breweries of the day were busy killing off Real Ale. The years of hard work have paid off and now the ales we brew enjoy an almost cult following both at home and recently abroad too.”

 

The Hogs Back brewery, situated on the Surrey/Hampshire border, has always been one of the leading lights behind the movement to save real ale brewing in the UK as championed by the CAMRA organisation. Hogs Back now sells its ales, including its flagship brew TEA, right across the southern counties, including central London. The brewery has a well won reputation for an unswerving dedication to quality as evidenced by its many brewing awards proudly displayed in the company’s meeting room.

 

 

Brewery founders Martin Zillwood-Hunt & Tony Stanton-Precious commented as follows; Tony said “This is a really big day for Mo, our Brewster (one of only a handful of lady brewers in the country), who having been with us since the start, shared our dream to try and brew the Best of the Bests. Our business continues to grow despite the difficult conditions and we owe much to Mo’s efforts, we thought it was time to recognise this and for the company and its staff to celebrate some good news.”

Martin added “We are very uncompromising here at Hogs Back, we use only the choicest grade hops and malts available locally and Mo has worked tirelessly to oversee and protect our quality standards. Consequently we can never be the cheapest beer available but fortunately the years have proved to landlord’s that our beers sell well and drinkers will often treat themselves to one or two extra ‘mugs of TEA’ compared to other brews.”

When asked what they thought the near future held for the ale business Martin replied, “Brewing is a fine margin business owing to the huge tax burden imposed by the government and recent raw material price increases; the current recession only exacerbates pressures on margins. We have already seen some breweries go bust this past year as the number of people visiting pubs drops from recent highs. As a result we believe more breweries and pubs will disappear, especially those who forget that the drinker deserves the absolute best quality pint possible for his hard earned pound.”

To celebrate this momentous achievement Mo is brewing a single batch of an ale called Utopia. “I’ve only ever brewed it three times before on the anniversary of each 1,000^th brew; so we will have to take extra care to get it right. It’s a super-luxury drop of ale where we, rather indulgently, add extra quantities of ingredients to achieve a really powerful flavour, the name says it all.”

Very limited supplies of Utopia will be delivered to selected real ale pubs w/c February 23rd, alternatively why not visit the brewery, take a tour and then take some ale home. Visit www.hogsback.co.uk for more information about where to find the Hogs Back brewery.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 2:50 pm and is filed under south east. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.