About Us

Located in the semi-rural location of Wakes Colne in the borough of Colchester, the brewery was formed in late 2011.

All funding came from the 3 founding directors and their friends and family. 

1st February 2012 saw the first brew on the 10 brewers’ barrels (about 1600 litres) kit, with this being the beer that remains our best-seller, namely Colchester No1. 

The brewery needed a strategy and an ethos that could enable it to establish a foothold in a crowded and competitive market.

The team settled on: 

  • Produce a range of characterful beers for drinkers in the Essex and its neighbouring counties
  • Select other breweries for reciprocal trading, allowing publicans easy access to beers from outside the region 
  • Focus on pub and beer festival trade, complemented by a small amount of direct-to-retail 
  • Seek finance from friends, family and retained profits – no bank debt 
  • Small, approachable and friendly, offering a high quality of service and an alternative to the corporate images and approaches of larger breweries 
  • Be part of the local community through working with other local business and supporting charities and other good causes
  • Traditional double drop fermentation as a key feature of the beer production, allowing for cleaner and easier-to-manage cask beers 
  • Focus on getting a fair price for a high quality and labour-intensive product.

This strategy and ethos served the brewery well during its first 9 years. The brew tally was 1468 as at March 2021 while staffing remains small at 5 full-time members of staff and 1 part-time. 

When COVID-19 came along all breweries were forced to either mothball the business or focus on retail sales for their survival. We did the latter and are hugely grateful for the support received from the beer drinkers in our area. 

Pubs and beer festivals will remain the brewery’s main focus – we should not forget that most customers sought us out during lockdown because they’d enjoyed our beers at these venues. 

However, direct-to-retail has naturally become a more important part of the business, putting us in a better position to withstand whatever is down the road. The founding ethos is otherwise unchanged.