From our proud beginnings in St Austell to our cutting-edge facilities at Hare Brewery, we have always been driven by a commitment to brewing brilliant beer.
Our anniversary prompts reflection on the balance we strike between our history and the opportunities of modern brewing. We are rooted in tradition – it’s hard not to be in an original Victorian brewery where we still mill the malt in the tower – yet we are always moving forward.
You feel our heritage most strongly when you walk through St Austell Brewery itself. The walls have absorbed generations of craft and care. I often think about the brewers who came before us, our founder Walter Hicks and his daughter Hester Parnall – who took the helm after his death – walking the same corridors.
Custodians of legacy
My office shelves hold brewing books dating back to the 1800s, their pages filled with recipes and notes from the past. We are custodians of that legacy, building on it and never taking it for granted. We often turn to these historic books, replicating recipes and honouring the beers that have shaped us.
We are particularly excited to bring back some of people’s favourite brews from over the years to celebrate our 175th year, including the best bitters Tinners and Trelawny, as well as Admiral’s Ale, first brewed in 2005 to mark the bicentenary of Nelson’s triumph at Trafalgar.
But heritage alone does not keep us moving. Innovation has shaped our business just as much as history has. Our modern brewhouse, installed in St Austell in 2012, was a pivotal moment – an example of tradition evolving. The acquisition of Hare Brewery in Bath in 2016 followed, which we then fitted with the latest brewing technology and a state-of-the-art canning line.
Our huge copper, now decommissioned, still sits proudly in the St Austell brewhouse, along with the old fermentation vessels at the top of the brewery, which were too large and heavy to remove. Our wooden fermentation vessels remain in use day and night, now lined with polypropylene, and five 320-barrel metal vessels capable of holding more than a quarter of a million pints at a time now sit alongside them.
Tech protects tradition
In 2018, we moved to crossflow filtration, reducing waste and taking a more sustainable approach to production. Aber Instruments ensure our yeast is pitched accurately at the start of fermentation and our laboratories are continuously upgraded with new equipment to keep us at the forefront of quality. For us, technology is a tool that helps us protect tradition in a modern world.
Innovation is not always about shiny new machines. Sometimes, it means exploring new hop varieties or new malts or embracing a fresh idea. Our Cask Club and limited-edition bottled beers give our brewers the freedom to experiment, trial new ingredients, revisit old recipes and push boundaries without losing sight of who we are.
Even Proper Job – now in its 20th year – was once an innovation. A bold, American-influenced IPA long before that style became fashionable. It began as a one-off Celtic Beer Festival brew. Today, we have reimagined it through Proper Job 0.5% ABV, carefully crafted with an understanding that low-alcohol beer is a profoundly different product that requires science, patience and persistence.
As we look to the future, my hope is simple; that in another 175 years we will still be raising a glass to our beers in our pubs. Tastes will change, but the joy of a great beer shared in a great pub never will.
