Bit of a tail of woe this one, Its been ages since there was a proper old skool brewery closure so when Brains announced it was moving a couple of years ago i was chomping at the bit to get in here and see what it might have to offer. On the face of it it didn't look that good, i mean the older brew house looked a bit bland compared to most and a lot of the rest was fairly modern sheds. That said tho breweries like this are never uneventful, thats part of why i like them so much. Well i was keen, i made my first trip before it had even closed and on my second i couldn't really tell how much of it was still being used. It was definitely pretty secure tho, even the older derpy looking bits were well looked after. The third trip i arrived to find it crawling with men stripping out the large stainless liqueur tanks dotted around the site, another fail! After this i knew it was probably the time but i just couldn't find a free day to go down and after three trips already i seemed to have cursed myself. A fourth trip resulting in failure and id have probably have given up forever! Well roll on a few months and my constant badgering of anyone remotely local to go check on progress eventually resulted in @Lenston going and having a poke. Sadly by this point it was clear i had missed it in its prime unmolested state. Half the site had gone already! Then before i could make a consolation trip corona popped up and i thought that would be it. I knew they were planning to keep the brew house but surely by the time i got there 3 or 4 months later it would be stripped to the brick? Well no actually! I may have been too late for the rest of the site but the brew house itself had survived quite well and made a fairly quality brewery explore with all the hallmarks ive come to expect.
The actual history of this site is pretty complex. It was originally Hancocks brewery built in i believe 1894 although im not sure if this building is quite that old. Before demolition started there was the remains of the original stable block with the Hancocks name in terracotta ties on the front but of course in the councils infinite wisdom the deemed that not to be worth keeping.. Hancocks were taken over by Bass Charrington in the 60s and that all became 'Welsh Brewers'. Brains came along in 1999 and bough up what was left of that (although they had been going elsewhere since 1882!) To make it even more complicated a lot of historic photos of the brewery show the chimney painted with the 'Allbrights' brand.. Never mind tho, brains moved to a crap industrial unit a couple of years ago now and the site is going to be come some kind of hideous 'development' just like their original brewery and quite frankly their beer..
The actual history of this site is pretty complex. It was originally Hancocks brewery built in i believe 1894 although im not sure if this building is quite that old. Before demolition started there was the remains of the original stable block with the Hancocks name in terracotta ties on the front but of course in the councils infinite wisdom the deemed that not to be worth keeping.. Hancocks were taken over by Bass Charrington in the 60s and that all became 'Welsh Brewers'. Brains came along in 1999 and bough up what was left of that (although they had been going elsewhere since 1882!) To make it even more complicated a lot of historic photos of the brewery show the chimney painted with the 'Allbrights' brand.. Never mind tho, brains moved to a crap industrial unit a couple of years ago now and the site is going to be come some kind of hideous 'development' just like their original brewery and quite frankly their beer..
