BREWERY FOCUS A day with Dorothy Goodbody The Wye Valley success story The Wye Valley Brewery is of The Barrels and its Formation nudging 10,000 barrels a Beer Drinking Team. More of them year and employs a total later. Brewing at The Barrels of 18 people. An increased to over 90 barrels a week and was involving seven-day undoubted success story working with each 22-barrel batch but it has been a long taking 13 hours to get into fermenter. haul for Peter Amor who The Amors cast around for left the comfort of somewhere bigger and found Corporateland back in Bulmers were getting rid of the nine- 1982. acre Symonds Cider site at Stoke Lacy on the road up to Bromyard. Symonds could trace their history Wye Valley By Roger Putman back to 1727, which makes Brewery Ltd Bulmers’ 1887 look very Stoke Lacy, inexperienced, but it was taken over Bromyard, eter had worked for Guinness as by Greenalls in 1985 and despite the HR7 4HG, UK Pa brewer and latterly in logistics squandering of hundreds of management for Bulmers in thousands on new plant the Tel: 01885 490505 Hereford. He set up the Abbey Warrington brewers failed to make a www.wyevalleybrewery.co.uk Brewery in Retford with a partner go of it and sold out with its from Whitbread long before the days Scrumpy Jack brand to Bulmers in of the Beer Orders, Progressive Beer 1988. Production gradually moved Duty and Direct Delivery Schemes. away and Wye Valley moved there in After his business partner gave up 2002. Amor moved the brewery to the The cider plant had a number of Nags Head pub in Canon Pyon, a green industrial sheds fronted by a plant down can be a bit of a village about ten miles west of pretty mock half-timbered visitor headache.” Hereford. By 1987, he had moved centre and copious car parking. One Jimmy joined BRi under Jim his brewery to the old Lamb Hotel in of the sheds houses the brewery, Murray and Simon Hadman in 1994 the centre of Hereford and another the services and a third after getting a post-grad diploma rechristened it The Barrels. Today might one day house a Wye Valley from the Watt. He moved to Hall and the company owns two pubs, the bottling plant. The outside tank farm Woodhouse at Blandford in 1997 other is the uniquely-named Rose has now gone leaving rather stark and five years later was to be found and Lion at Bromyard. These two concrete bases but at least the views running Munton’s mash filter 100% wet pubs consume some 10% across the rolling Herefordshire operation at Stowmarket producing of Wye Valley volume and provide countryside to the Black Mountains malt extracts mainly for the food useful retail profit thus showing the beyond have been restored. The site industry. He moved to Herefordshire contribution that owning a pub can drops away from the road and in 2003. Stoically, he rides his make to the proto microbrewer. somewhere amongst the foliage I bicycle into the brewery daily, a Peter’s son Vernon joined the was assured there was an activated round trip of 24 miles which he has business in 1996 after gaining a sludge effluent plant which to do in all weathers as he has sold degree in mathematics and spending discharges into the stream at the his car! twelve months getting his hands bottom of the hill. dirty with brewing staff at Youngs in “It is far too big for our needs,” Focus on sales London. Vernon is now MD and Head Brewer Jimmy Swan told me, Vernon Amor admits that previously Peter is a very hands-on Executive “It is nice to have limitless steam he and his father had been too Chairman and enthusiastic licencee and refrigeration but turning the focused on production and winning The BREWER & DISTILLER INTERNATIONAL • Volume 3 • Issue 2 • February 2007 • www.ibd.org.uk 44 Engineering Manager Milo Ingram has been at the plant since the Symonds days. Today he is helping out cask racking as they were a man short. BELOW: The front of the Wye Valley visitor centre with (inset) signage to attract passing motorists to buy all sorts of Dorothy Goodbody memorabilia. prizes for the beers and sales could Devon and the Lake District leaving into the supermarkets is have been building faster. So with these in the capable hands of Beer an uphill struggle. We are Jimmy in the brewing seat and Peter Seller. working with Branded Drinks to at the pub, the sales team was Competition continues to be tight expand sales, they will want a cut in enhanced. 2005 sales were up a with Hobsons at Cleobury Mortimer an already low-margin sector but healthy 21% on 2004 and at the time nearby and a number of smaller they are experienced in finding a of my visit (August 2006) another start-up micros but Sharps from way into that market,” he concluded. 23% has been added. The core Cornwall now have a depot in Most of the bottles form the delivery area for five flat drays, Bristol and Wickwar are making Dorothy Goodbody range. Dorothy which can carry up to 52 firkins at a aggressive inroads. is depicted as one of the pin ups time, stretches between “Given a choice of Progressive which might have adorned the nose Birmingham, Shrewsbury, Beer Duty or Direct Delivery I of a Boeing B17 bomber, she was Swindon/Oxford and Bristol. The would pick the SIBA DDS scheme apparently the daughter of a large map in the sales office showed every time as it gets us into Punch local hop farmer and might a series of tongues up to Manchester, and Enterprise,” said Vernon have been obliging to into North Wales, mid Wales. West enthusiastically. “What’s the point of young gentlemen. Wales and down to Cardiff. These having cheaper beer but not being Obviously double areas are called ‘trawls’; customers able to get it to market? entendres abound in the are called and Manchester loads go “Around 6% of output goes into advertising blurb! Peter on a Monday, North Wales on bottle. All brands are bottle- Amor thought the name Tuesday etc. Wye Valley has conditioned. We have smart PSL Wye Valley Stout would abandoned direct deliveries to labels put on by Thwaites but getting have been too boring so The BREWER & DISTILLER INTERNATIONAL • Volume 3 • Issue 2 • February 2007 • www.ibd.org.uk 45 BREWERY FOCUS Wye Valley people TOP LEFT: Vernon (left) and Peter Amor in the cellar of the Barrels pub. ABOVE: Head Brewer Jimmy Swan samples an FV. ABOVE RIGHT: Brewer Simeon Davis dips the hop back. LEFT: Matt Ingram jugs in the finings before racking. Dorothy was introduced to promote while Butty Bach (‘little friend’ in effluent from, a number of local a Wholesome Stout (4.6%ABV) still Welsh) at 4.5% offers a sweetness houses including The Plough pub brewed with flaked barley but and lower hop rate (Goldings, next door. Today only Barbara without the Irish Northdown hops Bramling Cross and Fuggles) to the Symonds who has a cottage on the since the yard in Kilkenny was market down in the Valleys. brewery site has such services. She grubbed up a few years ago. There is Hops arrive from Charles Faram provides an array of flower pots a tasty Golden Ale at 4.2%ABV with in Freshpaks and as soon as a pack is which makes the Wye Valley empty 80°EBC crystal which won a medal opened the rest is placed in a chest cask yard probably the prettiest in at Munich and Country Ale which, at freezer converted into a refrigerator. England! 6%ABV is also put into cask as a The smell on opening was divine! winter ale. This just goes to show what you are The ‘F’in FMA There are a host of specials from losing with ambient storage even on The Stoke Lacy brewery was the Tippling Philosopher to a beer top of the inevitable oxidation of the designed by Victor Firth. Victor was celebrating the birth of the founder hop compounds. There is no dry one of Peter Amor’s old chums from of the Morgan motor car in Stoke hopping and typically 30% of the Guinness and he became the ‘F’in Lacy village in 1881. He built the hops are added late into the hop project management company FMA. first of the famous three wheeled back. The brewery was planning its Amor dragged him out of retirement cars in nearby Malvern in 1910. first green hop brew from the 2006 in France to put together a 40-barrel Visitors to the shop are able to buy Fuggles harvest. Should the brewery. Victor’s dedication is the surplus pump clips and hefty moisture be calculated at 60 or 80%, commemorated in the Victor J. Firth blocks of beer mats from a very what happens if the bittering is over Bar in the Brewery Visitor Centre. colourful display amongst the T- done? Brewer Swan thought it best Hi-line in Burton on Trent shirts and bottles of Dorothy. to ring round for advice and err on provided a copper and pairs of 20- the side of underdoing it in a beer barrel, 30-barrel and a single 40- Three main cask brands named St Michael’s Ale after the barrel FV. The 1000kg mash tun There are three main cask brands local hospice and 29th September came from Bedford Stainless which, selling virtually equal volumes.