Westerham Brewery

REVIVING A RICH BREWING HERITAGE Established in 2004 the Westerham Brewery Company is proud to bring brewing back to the historic town of Westerham. With a rich brewing heritage, Westerham can once again be proud of locally brewed, top quality craft beers. Producing exceptional craft beer for the local market, we support the initiative to reduce food miles in the supply chain. Many ‘national brands’ are transported long distances and suffer from poor storage and handling. Westerham Brewery Company has revived many of the much-loved flavours of the old Black Eagle Brewery, which closed in 1965 following the catastrophic consolidation by the ‘Big Brewers’ in the 1950’s and 1960's. WATER The local water, which percolates through the Lower Greensand Ridge to the north of Westerham, is excellent for brewing pale bitter beers for which Westerham was once famous. The Vale of Holmesdale has over the years supported many breweries on account of the water including at one time two breweries in Westerham, the Swan and the Black Eagle. We have drilled down our own borehole 90m into the Hythe beds of the Lower Greensand. MALT We use only the finest English winter malting barley. Our malts are supplied by Crisp Malting of Fakenham in Norfolk and our coloured malts are produced by Simpsons Malt. Our beers contain up to seven different malts to produce a wide range of beer styles and colours. HOPS We are mad about hops, specifically Kent hops. Why be a small brewery in Kent and not use the wonderful hops grown by our valiant hop growers. We have developed a particularly close working relationship with Ian Strang who farms the Scotney Castle Estate in Lamberhurst and the Finchcocks’ hop gardens in Goudhurst. 80% of the hops we use are grown in Kent and we use 9 different Kent hops in the Spirit of Kent. Our suppliers are Lupofresh (Finchcocks’ and Scotney), English Hops (C&R Edmed) and Charles Faram (Non Kent hops), Steiner Hops (USA and European Hops) and Yakima Chief (USA).