Stir up Sunday at Hobsons
Crouch family
Hobsons Brewery held its first ever Stir Up Sunday, masterminded by new boy Reuben Crouch. The Christmas Pudding extravaganza was held at the brewery’s tasting room in Cleobury Mortimer on Sunday 23rd November.
‘Stir up Sunday’ is a British Christmas tradition of bringing the family together to make a Christmas pudding before advent. Hobsons decided to take this concept one step forward and invite local families on mass to make a giant Christmas pudding. All the ingredients were provided, you just needed to turn up with your apron and wooden spoon!
The event proved so popular that a second session had to be organised to cope with the demand, with 52 adults and 17 children taking part in Hobsons Stir up Sunday. New Hobsons employee Reuben Crouch led the group of cooks, getting everyone involved from zesting fruit, crumbing bread, cracking eggs, weighing ingredients and everyone took their turn to stir the pudding.
Lucy Thomas
Proud to be a local brewer, Hobsons sourced the ingredients for the pud from some local producer friends, including dried fruit from Bob and Helen at Ludlow Nut Company, bread from Ludlow Food Centre that had been made with flour from Bacheldre Mill and milk from Mawley Milk here in Cleobury. Plus a special ingredient from the brewery was added to the recipe – Hobsons Postman’s Knock, a rich ruby porter perfect to add a depth of flavour to the pud.
At the end of the event, people took home a portion of the Christmas pud mixture to steam at home in special pudding bowls which had been sourced from Wenlock Pottery.
Reuben commented ““We really value our local community and it was lovely to see so many families joining in and having fun. In some cases we had three generations from the same family helping to prepare the puds. It was a really lovely atmosphere and definitely something we’ll repeat again next year.”
Rollings family with Reuben
