With all our pubs closed, Britain’s brewers need you!

ADNAMS has been brewing beer in the ancient Suffolk town of Southwold since 1872. Still primarily family-owned, it makes some of the UK’s best-loved beers, employs about 30 people at its brewery and operates 38 pubs and 13 stores across EastAnglia. With 90 per cent of staff across the wider business furloughed because of the lockdown, the company is currently producing about half its normal output of about 120,000 brewer’s barrels a year.

Adnams has also been making alcohol for hand sanitisers but, like many UK breweries, it faces a challenging time waiting for pubs to reopen.

Head brewer, Limerick-born Fergus Fitzgerald, 44, explained: “Like many breweries, a lot of our beer is sold in pubs and much of the profit is gone. We’re all trying to sell bottles and cans direct to the public and through the super markets. That’ s going really well but it’s never going to make up for the volume or profit that comes through pubs and restaurants. We’ ve put social distancing in but we’ re still able to produce.We keep running out of our Ghost Ship pale ale which I’m assured is a good thing but it doesn’t always feel like it!” The brewer recently joined forces with the Camden Town Brewery to combine the flavours of Ghost Ship with Camden’s Hells Lager.The result, Camden-on-Sea India Pale Lager, is light and crisp with a hoppy bite.

And a decade or so ago, Adnams created its own Copper House dry gin, successfully riding the wave of the gin boom. Fergus said: “It might have seemed a weird thing but Adnams has always struck its own course.We thought it was a good idea and the gin has gone phenomenally well.”

Now Adnams, like other brewers, is waiting to hear when and how pubs can reopen. Fergus added: “There will be an outpouring of relief and we want customers to come back to celebrate being together again.We will be doing everything we can to ensure our pubs feel like a safe haven.”

I’ll raise a glass to that. In the meantime, support your breweries by buying online or from a local retailer.