Wychwood Brewery

Infobox Brewery
name = Wychwood Brewery


caption = Logo of Wychwood Brewery
location = Witney, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
owner = Refresh UK
opened = 1983
production = 50,000 UK barrels (8,200,000 L)
active_beers = brewbox_beer|name=Black Wych|style=Stout brewbox_beer|name=Circle Master/Scarecrow|style=Golden ale brewbox_beer|name=Fiddler's Elbow|style=Wheat beer brewbox_beer|name=Goliath|style=Golden ale brewbox_beer|name=Hobgoblin|style=Strong ale brewbox_beer|name=WychCraft|style=Pale ale
seasonal_beers =
other_beers = brewbox_beers|type=Seasonal cask ale brewbox_beer|name=Dirty Tackle|style=Best bitter brewbox_beer|name=Dog's Bollocks|style=ESB brewbox_beer|name=Festive Spirits|style=Winter ale brewbox_beers|type=Seasonal bottled beer brewbox_beer|name=Bah Humbug|style=Winter warmer brewbox_beer|name=White Wych|style=Bitter brewbox_beers|type=Duchy Originals organic brewbox_beer|name=Organic Ale|style=Bitter brewbox_beer|name=Summer Ale|style=Bitter brewbox_beer|name=Winter Ale|style=Rye beer brewbox_beers|type=Sainsbury's brewbox_beer|name=Firecrest|style=Strong ale brewbox_beer|name=Osprey|style=Strong ale brewbox_beers|type=Retired brewbox_beer|name=Corn Circle|style=Pale ale brewbox_beer|name=England's Ale|style=Bitter brewbox_beer|name=Old Devil|style=Pale ale brewbox_beer|name=Pumpking|style=Pumpkin ale brewbox_beer|name=Red Kite|style=Bitter brewbox_beer|name=Whirlygig|style=Best bitter
cider = brewbox_beer|name=Green Goblin|style=Cider

Wychwood Brewery is an English brewery located in the town of Witney, Oxfordshire.

Wychwood Brewery produces around 50,000 barrels (8,200,000 L) of cask ale each year, and is the UK's largest brewer of organic ales. Wychwood filtered and bottled beers are exported all over the world including the United States, Canada, Sweden, France, Australia and Japan.

The brewery is noted for its intricate, fantasy-inspired label artwork.

History

The brewery is sited at the old Eagle Maltings, built in 1841 to malt barley for John William Clinch's brewery.

Clinch & Co Brewery was respected in Southern England with an estate of seventy one pubs. In 1961 Courage bought Clinch's for its pub estate and closed down the brewery.

In 1983 the original Clinch's Brewery site was purchased by Paddy Glenny who christened the building The Eagle Brewery, but named the brewing company Glenny Brewery.

In 1990, the Eagle was re-named the Wychwood Brewery after the ancient Wychwood Forest which borders Witney. The brewery was taken over in the spring of 2002 by Refresh UK.

Notable Beers

Wychwood Hobgoblin is the best-known and most popular beer brewed at Wychwood Brewery. It is 5.2 percent alcohol by volume in bottles and cans, 4.5% (previously 5.0%) on cask, and is described by Wychwood as a "strong dark ale." Jeremy Moss, Wychwood's head brewer, describes the drink as "full bodied and well balanced with a chocolate toffee malt flavour, moderate bitterness and a distinctive fruity character with a ruby red glow."

The current motto for Hobgoblin is "What's the matter Lagerboy, afraid you might taste something?", challenging drinkers of pale lager, a more popular style of beer in Britain, to consume a more prominently-flavoured drink. In October 2004 and 2005, Wychwood used a variation of this motto for Halloween, "Afraid of the dark, Lagerboy?". A 2006 complaint against Wychwood to the Advertising Standards Authority that the Halloween campaign was "aggressive" and "offensive" was not upheld. [http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/adjudications/non_broadcast/Adjudication+Details.htm?Adjudication_id=40872]

Circle Master is a golden pale ale made organically at 4.7 percent strength. It combines Target hops with Plumage Archer barley malt. It is sold as Scarecrow in the USA. When it was launched in the UK it was called Corn Circle beer, but the name was changed after a dispute with the Hop Back Brewery who produce a beer called Crop Circle. The new name Circle Master is a reference to [http://www.circlemakers.org CircleMakers] , the UK arts collective founded by John Lundberg who have been creating crop circles since the early 1990s; the label actually depicts a scarecrow standing in the middle of a crop circle. Recently Wychwood began brewing an oak aged hard cider called Green Goblin.

Wychwood and Brakspear

Wychwood took over the brewing of the newly-acquired Brakspear beers in October 2002. The new Brakspear brewery was integrated into an expansion of the Wychwood plant, and includes parts of the copper 'copper' (boiling vessel), as well as some of the fermenting vessels which themselves had been refurbished at Henley. There is only one brewhouse at Witney but two separate fermenting rooms for the separate Wychwood & Brakspear beers. The Brakspear beers are still brewed in Witney by Wychwood & not in Henley, where the original brewery site has the has been converted into a boutique hotel.

Refresh UK

Refresh UK was set up in 2000 as a contract brewing business by some of the former managers of Ushers. Refresh UK now have two brewing plants of their own in Witney.

References

External links

* [http://www.wychwood.co.uk/ Official Wychwood Brewery Website]
* [http://www.quaffale.org.uk/php/brewery/399 Quaffale]
* [http://www.refreshuk.com/ Refresh UK website]