Brewing up a winner!
Posted: Nov 1, 14:44
Little Valley Brewery has won its first award –within days of the brewery’s official opening. It was Little Valley’s Stoodley Stout that won the ‘Beer of the Festival’ award at Smithfield Beer Festival in Manchester recently.
Mike Knowles, the festival organiser takes up the story: ‘The Smithfield Beer Festival takes place four times a year and is in its 8th year. It attracts around 1,000 visitors over the four days from near and far. But with the regular and local clientele have a preference for the paler more hoppy beers, it was a great surprise to us that a stout won the award.
The Festival included four beers from Little Valley Brewery, ‘At the festival,’ continues Mike, ‘we always try to include new beers and new breweries –hence taking four beers from Little Valley Brewery. Withens IPA, Cragg Vale Bitter and Tod’s Blonde beers were also supplied to the Festival and went down very well too. As these were the first beers produced by Little Valley, we were delighted to showcase them.’
Commercial merit
The ‘Beer of the Festival’ award at Smithfield is unusual, as Mike Knowles explains, ‘there’s a number of subjective ways in which beers can be judged at festivals, but our criteria for the ‘Beer of the Festival’ award is down to the speed and volume of sales: the most popular beer is the one that sells out fastest –this also endorses the commercial merit for the pubs that offer Little Valley’s beers.’
‘We think this way of evaluating a beer of merit is equally valid and as effective as a straw poll of individuals, the words we kept hearing at the festival were “You’ve got to try the Stoodley Stout, it’s absolutely amazing.” Little Valley Brewery has produced an outstanding stout. I can’t recall a stout winning this award at any time in the past.’
This is further borne out by what Little Valley is finding. “As a start-up brewery, sales are continuing to grow as our reputation is built -and the subsequent demand for our beers grows, and we are finding that most publicans are soon placing repeat orders with the brewery.”