![]() Winning this loyalty is tough, which is why the brewery has invested in state-of-the art equipment designed with visits from trade customers in mind. “People want to go to a pub to experience new beers, but a permanent stockist is what every brewer, including us, is after,” says Duncan. Such hyper-local provenance is a big part of the brewery’s marketing story, which is becoming increasingly important if they are to realise their ambition of becoming a national and even international brand.Ĭarving out a space for the nine beers which the brewery has so far produced among the 11,000 or so real ales shouting for attention in the UK is no easy task, although the 19 awards they have already lifted helps. “The weird and wacky are good at winning awards and making a lot of noise, but with the traditional session beers like ours, there’s no place to hide.”Ībout 20 per cent (100 tonnes) of all the Propino spring malting barley produced on-farm goes into Long Man beers. This is something I am very proud of because the key to well-executed beers like these is balance. Now I hope Long Man is known for producing quality cask ales, most of which are fairly traditional ‘cooking’ bitters. Jamie says: “To begin with, I focused on producing the beers which would help establish the brand – best bitter, pale ales, etc. This year, it’s aiming for the beer Oscars, the International Brewing Awards, held every two years, where it will come up against some of the best in the world.Īlthough the brand was deliberately designed to appeal to the biggest bandwidth of drinkers, maintaining quality is a deceptively skilful task. Now a partner in the business with Duncan and Steve Lees, he steered Long Man to success in last year’s Beer Awards, where all four of the beers entered came away with medals to add to the hat-trick the brewery picked up at the International Beer Challenge a month earlier. I can literally jump in the car and drive up to take a look at the barley, and we do.” #Rising storm brewery how to#Ultimately, the choice of variety is Duncan’s to make and I certainly wouldn’t tell a third generation farmer how to grow it, but he does involve me and we do regularly inspect the fields together. Jamie says: “Not only does it offer a level of control which only a handful of other brewers have, but it is also environmentally sustainable. Previously with the award-winning Royal Tunbridge Wells Brewery, Kent, he was intrigued by the chance to influence production all the way from plough to pint. “But even then it’s gone far faster and far harder than I ever anticipated.”Ī self-confessed ‘session drinker’ whose taste in beer was influenced by three years studying agriculture at Newcastle University in the heart of ‘Broon Dog’ country, Duncan recruited head brewer Jamie Simm to be the creative genius behind Long Man even before the paint was dry on the brewery walls. “The key to our success was being plugged in to a drinks distribution business with 30 lorries on the road from the outset,” says Duncan. While most find it a challenge to establish a brand locally, let alone nationally, Long Man rapidly went to eight brews a week and 2.5 million pints a year – half of them sold outside of Sussex. White, turned what could have been a fanciful idea into a no-brainer, since Duncan knew one of the biggest challengers to farm-based breweries is the cost of transporting barrel loads of beer. The fact the stranger who planted the seed of the idea for Long Man Brewery turned out to be Steve Lees, commercial director of the locally based specialist drinks distributor H.T. “I hadn’t been looking to start a brewery, but I got chatting to a chap at a village party to celebrate the wedding of William and Kate and he suggested I turn my malting barley into beer,” says Duncan, who was already farming 728 hectares (1,800 acres) of combinable crops with beef and sheep on a further 607ha (1,500 acres) of grass near the Long Man of Wilmington – a fertility symbol carved into the Sussex Downs which would become synonymous with a string of award-winning ales. When Church Farm said goodbye to its dairy herd 10 years ago, Duncan Ellis thought he’d seen the back of 4am starts for good.īut now you’ll find him up before dawn managing another liquid asset – and the return on investment on this one is considerably better than milk.įive years ago, having turned down countless approaches to convert his redundant dairy buildings into highly desirable office accommodation, Duncan opened a brewery. ![]()
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