Southern style

Dominic Roskrow gets to grips with the breweries of Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex and Kent.

If you’ve been reading too much about brewery closures and the depressed state of the beer industry in the United Kingdom, then perhaps you should treat yourself to a trip down to the corner of England round London.

While the Home Counties have a significant number of casualties and some great names have fallen by the wayside, the region remains a fertile hunting ground for quality beer, for brewers with an eye on the future and a production line in the past. And there is a wonderful mix of old, oldish, newish and new, suggesting that quality can still win through but passion and enthusiasm are helping to ensure that the beer drinker can continue to look forward to new and challenging brews.

In fact so vibrant is the South Eastern region that we have divided it in two.

So where to start? We decided to highlight two of the region’s more iconic breweries and a couple that have reached the milestone of 10 years brewing.

HARVEYS, LEWES EAST SUSSEX Some breweries reach a semi-iconic status where everyone from enthusiasts to the managing directors of rival companies acknowledge their outstanding contribution to the brewing world and the qualities that make their beers special. So it is with Harveys, the Sussex brewery with a history stretching back some 200 years.

The business was first established by John Harvey in Lewes and has been part of the landscape ever since. And it secured its future in the 1980s when it expanded to double its brewing capacity to 50,000 barrels.

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By Dominic Roskrow

Section : Regional Focus

Page number : 35