November 2008:

Russet, our autumn seasonal beer, has won a gold medal in the Speciality Beer category at the SIBA Midlands Beer Competition held at The Robin Hood beer festival in Nottingham. Russet now goes forward to the SIBA National final in March next year.

Building work has commenced at the brewery and is expected to take about three months. This will give us larger offices, a customer reception area and extra storage space; allowing us to bottle and store Hullabaloo and Hocus Pocus. There will also be a new Malt and Hop store along with extra cask storage space.

All of the staff of the brewery visited Lords Cricket Ground on Saturday 11th October to receive the Champion Beer of Britain (Golden Ale category) Silver medal award for Ferryman's Gold. Ferryman's Gold was also chosen by CAMRA to be served before and after the luncheon.

August 2008:

UPDATE: We would like to congratulate James Pond-Jones who successfully completed 5 stages of The Grand Raid Cristalp on 23rd August. He cycled 90km in only 8 hours; starting in Verbier, France and finishing in Grimentz in Switzerland, crossing numerous valleys in the process. This was all the more impressive as he had to compete alone as sadly Julian had to pull out due to injury. Further to this achievement, he managed to raise an impressive £2,540 for Cancer Research UK.

The Loddon Brewery is proud to be sponsoring James Pond-Jones and Julian Prentice as they compete in The Grand Raid Cristalp. The race takes place in Switzerland, starting in Verbier and ending up in Grimentz. It is a massive 121km long, across six Alpine valleys, with over 5430 metres of elevation and 66km of climbing. Around 4000 people compete in this event and it reaches a maximum height of 2800 metres. They are raising money for Cancer Research UK. We would like to wish them both the best of luck!

Loddon Ferryman's Gold takes Silver at the Great British Beer Festival.

A Little over a month ago, The Loddon Brewery celebrated 5 years of brewing. Now, we are celebrating once again as our flagship ale Ferryman's Gold has won a Silver Medal in the Golden Ale Category at the Great British Beer Festival. The results were announced during the Trade Session at Earl's Court in London on 5th August. Ferryman's Gold is no stranger to winning awards, but this is by far its biggest to date; making it officially the 2nd best golden ale in Britain for 2008/09.

Brewery owners Chris and Vanessa Hearn said that they are delighted and proud at winning the award.

"One of our objectives was to win an award at the Great British Beer Festival within five years of brewing; to achieve it really is a dream come true."

"Everybody at the brewery has worked extremely hard since we began and this award comes as a result of a real team effort."

Ferryman's Gold, a continental style golden beer at 4.4%, is available nationally in both draught and bottle format.

The awards ceremony will be held at Lords Cricket Ground on 11th October.