OXFORDSHIRE
Hook Norton Brewery Sitting in a quiet village, this brewery is a world away from Banbury and its hordes of shoppers. Mottled brick walls and tall red-framed windows look out over the mellow landscape of the Cotswold Hills, yet wandering along the edge of Brewery Lane there are few clues as to the site’s vast size. Take a closer look at the bottles on tables outside the Pear Tree Inn nearby, with its glorious hanging baskets, and you’ll feel its influence – Hooky’s classic and Red Rye beers, delivered by shire horses every Friday.
This traditional Victorian tower brewery celebrates its 170th birthday this year, and it looks much like it did in the 1800s. Our tour guide, Malcolm, has worked at the brewery for 12 years. He leads us into the brewery museum where we walk under thick wooden beams, gawping at historical machinery, through the stables where handsome shire horses Commander and Lucus reside, an integral part of the operation in delivering kegs to local pubs, and on to the tower itself to learn about the 10 “very hands on” stages of gravity-fed brewing that flows from top floor to bottom – where we are invited to taste the coffee-rich chocolate malt and peer across vast bubbling sheets of active yeast. Arriving in the dimly lit basement, our reward is a glass of Hooky Gold, the brewery’s soft ambercoloured beer with notes of soft fruit and hops.
We polish off our trip with a burger and hopped cheese, and a steak and ale pie, alongside another pint in the Malthouse Kitchen restaurant. Here’s to another 170 years. hooky.co.uk