Build a batch. We will brew it.
Five hundred litres, brewed on the small plant, to a recipe you build here. It takes about nine weeks and roughly one in four of them turns out better than the thing we sell.
What you are actually buying.
Five hundred litres is about fourteen hundred and forty bottles, or four nine-gallon casks and the rest in bottle. It is a real brew on the real small plant, in the real queue behind the real beer, which is why it takes nine weeks rather than three.
You pick the base, the malt, the hop, the yeast and the format. Everything else — water treatment, mash schedule, fermentation temperature — is ours, because those are the decisions that separate beer from vinegar and we are not letting you make them.
You get the whole batch. There is no minimum you can leave behind and no arrangement where we sell the rest.
Build the batch.
Nine weeks, roughly.
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Week 0
The call
We go through your build, tell you which bit of it is a mistake, and put a date in the brew calendar.
A date, and an honest opinion.
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Week 1
Malt and hops in
The barley comes back from Warminster. Hops are weighed and held cold.
A photograph of the pallet, which is less exciting than it sounds.
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Week 2Now
Brew day
Mash, boil, whirlpool, chill, pitch. Ten hours, and you are welcome to stand in the way of it.
An invitation, and the original gravity.
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Weeks 2–4
Fermentation
The yeast does the work. We take a gravity reading daily and do essentially nothing else.
A gravity chart, updated daily.
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Weeks 4–8
Conditioning
Cold, still and slow. Lagers take the whole five weeks; ales are usually done in two.
Nothing. This is the boring bit and we will not pretend otherwise.
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Week 8
Packaging
Bottled or racked, labelled, boxed.
The label proof, for approval.
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Week 9
Collection
Off the dock, into your car, out of our way.
A date and a pallet weight.
Nine weeks is the honest average. A lager in a busy autumn has run to twelve.
What people have made.
A stout with the roast barley and the farmhouse yeast. Tasted of liquorice and old church. Half of it was extraordinary and half of it was undrinkable, which is roughly what we were told.
We did the heritage barley and the hedgerow hops because it was the most expensive thing on the page. It was also the best beer that has come off that plant, so make of that what you will.
Lager. Boring, correct, gone in three weeks.
The specification, in full.
The batch
- Volume
- 500 litresInto the fermenter. Expect 5–7% loss by packaging.
- Bottles
- ≈1,440 × 330mlOr 14 × nine-gallon casks, or a split.
- Lead time
- 9 weeks typical12 in September and October.
- Minimum
- One batchThere is no half-batch. The plant does not do it.
The rules
- Labelling
- Yours, within reasonIt carries our brewery number, so it carries our liability.
- Resale
- Not without a licenceYou are buying beer, not a business. Selling it needs your own.
- Duty
- Included in the pricePaid on removal from bond, at the small producer rate.
- Age
- 18+, verifiedAt enquiry, at collection, and by the driver if it is delivered.
Please enjoy Hawkstone responsibly. Everything with alcohol in it is age-restricted: we will card you at checkout and the driver will card you again at the door.
What people ask.
Yes, within the labelling rules — it still carries our brewery number and our allergen declaration, because it is still our licence.
Not without your own alcohol licence. You are buying beer, not a business.
Sometimes it is. We will tell you at the gravity reading rather than at collection, and you can decide then whether to take it or take the loss with us.
No, and about half do not. It is ten hours of a man watching a thermometer.
Elsewhere on the estate.
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/brewing/taprooms/
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