The Moor Beer micro brewery used to be a goat dairy that had been adapted as a brewery.

The equipment was not ideal, and labour intensive, but none-the-less, Justin Hawke and his small team were producing a range of fine, award winning, craft ales which gained a tremendous reputation for taste and quality.

Then, last year, they received a grant from the Somerset Levels & Moors Local Action Group, replaced all the equipment with hugely more efficient, purpose built kit, won a contract with a national pub company - and their turnover quadrupled!

About Justin

Justin grew up in California, but is a committed Anglophile and has lived in this country since 1997. He was then a director of a large, multinational software company, but had an interest in brewing and a taste for good beer since he was a young man.

His father had introduced him to real ale as a teenager when we visited England, and he says it has all been downhill since then!

One of his career advisers at West Point sparked the idea of his becoming a brewer by giving him a taste of his homebrew, and when he moved to San Francisco he became friends with other home brewers having been given a beer kit by his wife one Christmas.

He had a look round some breweries where his friends were working and the idea of opening his own brewery began to ferment (!).

In 2007, he and his wife Maryann bought Moor Beer and he became a full-time brewer.

After only a few minutes in his company, it is not difficult to see why he has made the company such a success. Not only is he an intelligent, experienced businessman with an eye for detail but also, quite simply, he is passionate about good beer and loves what he does.

His enthusiasm is infectious, and he and his small team take obvious and justifiable pride in what they do, producing what is regarded by aficionados as some of the best ales in Britain.

He believes that the future of brewing is ultimately about drinkability and that there is room for a multitude of global beer styles, feeling that there are far too many boring and very similar beers on the market as well as novelty beers that aren’t really worth what they cost.

And the ales he and his team produce are certainly distinctive and innovative, including a selection of seasonal brews – one of them an autumnal ale brewed with sloe berries!

The Business

Moor Beer was founded in 1996 and though it gained a good reputation was not a great success. Then, in 2007, Justin and Maryann took over.

They expanded from being a five barrel brewery to a ten barrel one, and, following the LARC grant-aided investment in new equipment, went to a twenty barrel capacity as well as their own bottling line.

The team of four now produce and sell a range of award winning, cask, keg and bottled beers all over this county and abroad.

The majority of their output is cask conditioned ale but they are also producing keg and bottled beer. Their bottles are hand-bottled in small batches and bottle-conditioned with live yeast for extra flavour. They are a generous 660 ml, well over a pint and so, as Justin says, “Perfect for sharing or enjoying on your own.”

A recent contract with Mitchells & Butlers, the leading operator of restaurants and pubs in Britain, has seen Moor Beer distributed all over the British Isles; they also supply many local pubs and retail outlets.

Much of the flavour of the ales comes from using a variety of hops from all over the world. Justin would prefer to use English hops, but our production is tiny and many of the best varieties now come from abroad, including the States and Germany, and it is the use of these different hops that is primarily responsible for the distinctive flavours of Moor Beer.

The malt, the other critical ingredient, is sourced in the South West, primarily from Tuckers’ Malting in Newton Abbot, one of only a very few floor maltings that produces malt in the traditional way.

All of Moor Beer’s production is naturally conditioned with yeast, unfiltered and unpasteurised. Where possible, it is also ‘unfined’.

The British public have an aversion to cloudy beer, believing mistakenly that it means the beer is not in good condition, so ‘finings’ made from fish are added to clarify it as most pubs don’t have the level of staff education to manage and sell unfined beer properly.

Naturally, this affects the flavour, and Justin is a passionate believer that, with the right expertise, beer with a natural yeast haze and goodness is far superior to the bright, sparkling beer that we have become accustomed to.

Tasting ‘Somerland Gold’, one of the bottled beers, which is absolutely delicious, I have to agree – and of course, as an added bonus, unfined beer is vegan!

Local Pubs that stock Moor Beer on Draft

Ring o’ Bells
Ashcott / The Famous Royal Navy Volunteer
Bristol
Stapleton Arms
Buckhorn Weston / Queen’s Arms
Corton Denham
Devonshire Arms
Long Sutton
Halfway House
Pitney / King’s Head
Wells

Outlets for Moor Beer in Bottles

Beermerchants.com
Scrumper Delicatessen
Pitney Farm Shop / Long Sutton Stores
Dobbie’s Garden Centre
Shepton Mallet / Brewer’s Droop Homebrew
0117 942 7923
West Country Ales
Ales By Mail / Pitney Farm Shop