Up to 360 barrels of ale are brewed each week at Nottingham’s Castle Rock Brewery. The company, located in Queensbridge Road, also operates 18 pubs, produces a wide range of core beers and an expansive range of seasonal and specials.
It’s a company that has experienced a huge growth: When it began producing beer, in 1998, it was at the rate of 25 to 30 barrels a week – or 7,200 to 10,072 pints.
At peak weeks in 2010, the output was ten times that volume and with the introduction of a shift system at Queen’s Bridge Road, following a £750,000 investment in increasing capacity, there is the potential to fill 360 barrels – more than 100,000 pints a week.
Colin Wilde, Castle Rock managing director, said: “When Castle Rock was founded in 1977 by ex-CAMRA chairman Chris Holmes, it was a pub company which began in Newark with the King’s Arms.”
“The simple ethos of a running a welcoming pub serving high quality ale was thoroughly appreciated by our customers, and Castle Rock began to acquire more pubs in Nottingham and the wider Midlands area, before expanding its operation further and becoming a brewery in 1998.”
Today, Castle Rock runs 18 pubs and has won ‘Pub Group of the Year’ on three occasions. The brewery, alongside a number of continuing accolades and awards (including Champion Beer of Britain 2010 for Harvest Pale) has increased its production from just 30 barrels per week in 1998 to 360.
The company now has more than 200 employees across its pub estate and brewery.
Castle Rock is celebrating famous sons and daughters of Nottingham with its series of specially brewed Nottinghamian Celebration Ales.
Most recently George John Scipio Africanus, the former slave who became Nottingham’s first black entrepreneur was highlighted with a real ale brewed in his memory.
Brewed in April, ‘George Africanus’ will be on sale at pubs across Nottingham, the East Midlands and Yorkshire. The brewery’s Nottinghamian ales continue in 2014 with ‘Digby Pearson’ from July and ‘Carl Froch’ from October. The first ale was ‘Sue Pollard’.
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