Project aim

Wentwell Brewery is a 2½ barrel plant, but we need to upgrade and streamline two areas of the process, one at the start and one at the end. 

 ABOUT WENTWELL BREWERY

Wentwell Brewery started off life as Mucky Duck Brewery, but, unknown to us, a brewery with a very similar name had started a few months earlier in Derby and not wanting any confusion to ensue, a rapid renaming was needed. The TV was on and a soap was playing, one of the characters had just fluffed a job interview and declared 'That went well!' BINGO!! Wentwell Brewery was born.

Life started for Wentwell in a domestic garage as a half-barrel plant, a great way to refine our recipes but not so great for sales. We sold mostly in bottles and did the occassional beer festival, occassionally meeting some well known faces along the way.

Expansion was required so all bank accounts were drained and a new 2 1/2 barrel plant was bought. This enabled us to sell more to the free trade, but we outgrew the garage so had to look for larger premises. It was at this point that we read about a new style of pub, the micro-pub, small licensed premises that use former shops or offices. Before we knew it we had our own, the popular LITTLE CHESTER ALE HOUSE which used to be a laundrette. It has had some famous visitors as well.

We now have a permanent outlet for our traditional ales and we also found larger premises for a new brewery. In April 2015 we signed a free of tie lease on a pub in Burton upon Trent, THE DERBY INN.

WHAT'S THE MONEY FOR?

Stocking our two pubs and selling to the free trade is feasible using our existing plant, but we are now ready to take the business forward, we aim to sell more to the free trade and this can be achieved by an increase in plant size or making the existing plant more efficient. We believe that it is better if we take the latter step first. Making our existing plant more efficient means less disruption at a very important time in the business with the new pub. For this we need a hot liquor tank (HLT) and a new heat exchange unit. Right now to get the liquor (the water to brew with) to the correct temperature, the brewer has to start at 5.30am to fire up the gas boilers. An HLT would operate from electric and be on a timer switch. At the end of the brew the wort (not quite beer yet, it needs yeast adding and then fermented) is pumped into the fermentor through a heat exchange unit to bring the temperature down to 20 celcius, our existing unit is too small and it takes over 2 hours to cool down.

This is what we are crowdfunding for, a hot liquor tank and a heat exchange unit.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and please like our Facebook page WENTWELL BREWERY

INVESTORS REWARDS

Beer in a bottle. We will reward everyone that invests with a range of our popular ales, these will be delivered to any UK address (if you want, you can collect from one of our pubs). As a thank- you, we will brew an exclusive ale, limited to exactly the number of investors. The gift pack contains 3 x 500ml bottles, the cases hold 12 x 500ml bottles.