For the Evening of Friday 16th May and all day Saturday 17th May, the Brecon Beer and Cider Festival will return to the Castle of Brecon Hotel. We're hoping to have a larger range of Welsh and other cask ales as well as a selection of ciders from Gwynt y Ddraig, as well as food, entertainments and we hope good weather! (there will be some covered space in case the last one doesn't work!)
More details will follow soon

On Saturday 26th May, the First Brecon Beer and Cider Festival will take place at the Castle of Brecon, in association with the Breconshire Brewery and Gwynt y Ddraig Cider. There will be 16 beers, and 10 ciders to choose from, with Live Music, Hog Roast, more food and other events also happening at various other sites in the town, including Castle Street Restaurant, The Boars Head, The Three Horseshoes, The Drovers Arms, The Clarence.

More Details to follow

The Breconshire Brewery’s permanent range of beers has been increased by the addition of Welsh Pale Ale - a 3.7% abv pale golden, mildly hopped session ale. The beer was formulated after a number of requests from drinkers at the Brewery’s two pubs in Brecon, and was launched in time for the reopening of the newly refurnished Drovers Arms in Llanfaes, where it has proven to be a hit with regulars.

Buster Grant says “I was researching old welsh beers styles last year for a talk I gave at NERAX ’06 - the New England Real Ale Exhibition in Boston, Mass. - and came across a number of references to a Welsh Pale Ale that was low gravity, not particularly hoppy pale ale. Whilst doing some research for what became Golden Bannau, I came across another reference to a low gravity “welsh” pale ale that was available in Brecon in the post war period. The rest, as they say, is now history!” Welsh Pale Ale is a smooth, easy to quaff, mildly hopped session ale, very pale in colour, with a slightly spicy aroma, and a pleasing, refreshing flavour.

Golden Bannau is a beer that has been commissioned for the 50th Anniversary of the Brecon Beacons National Park. This beer has been brewed initially for bottles, and these were launched in Brecon over the weekend of 14/15th April, at the Brecon Farmers’ Market and at the Civic ceremony to mark 50 years of the National Park. The beer is based on a recipe for a Brown Ale that is as old as the Park. Tasting notes for the beer suggest that “this dark golden Brown Ale exudes a richness and real character. Smooth malty flavours are balanced by a light smokiness and a gentle bitterness which combine to create a remarkable drinking experience.”

April also sees the launch of a new one-off brew - End of the Road. This beer has been brewed with the last stocks of a hop called 93/50 (aka Susan). These were certainly the last of the these hops in Wales, probably the last in the UK and possibly in the world! Sadly this experimental hop variety was last grown in 2004, and has not been grown since, and is all but extinct. This golden ale is brewed with Pale Optic malt and only 93/50 hops, which provide a clean, floral aroma with a citrus spice, and a refreshing zing-ing flavour. There are only 40 firkins of this beer available, and once they’re gone, that will be the end of it!

Golden Valley, our best selling, multi award winning beer gets a new image- but the recipe remains unchanged! The new clip has clearer lettering and a brighter image, which will allow it it to stand out at the bar. Head Brewer Buster Grant said "I'm delighted with the new design, and hope that customers will find Golden Valley easier with the new Design!" He reiterated that whilst the clip design has changed, the beer itself remains as good as ever...

The Breconshire Brewery's five Bottled Beers were all entered into this year's competition, and all five progressed into the second round of judging.
After the final roounds, the results were announced amd three of our beers have been awarded Commended status : Red Dragon, Ramblers Ruin and Winter Beacon.
Head Brewer Buster Grant said "I'm delighted with these awards for our bottled beers - it is a reflection of the amount of care and effort that goes into making them, and assuring the quality of the beer. I was also pleased with the comments that the judges made, espcially the enthusiasm for our labels. However, we'll have to try harder for next year!"

The CAMRA Champion Beer of Wales Competition is held each year at the Great Welsh Beer and Cider Festival. This year's Festival was in Cardiff City Hall over the last week of November. The Competition is a series of blind tastings, and involves beers from nominated Welsh breweries. This year saw a much increased field, and the overall standard of beers were excellent. The overall results are : CAMRA Champion Beer of Wales, 2006 : Otley O8. Runner up : Brains Dark Sadly we just missed out on the overall finals, but are pleased to note that Brecon County Ale and Golden Valley came second in their classes (Bitters and Golden Ales resapectively), and Brecknock Best and Red Dragon were also placed in their classes (Best Bitter and Strong Ales. Keith Jenkins (the organiser of the Competition) said "I am happy to report on the good quality of the beers tasted, making the task of choosing the winner even harder, and confirming that we have an excellent group of breweries in Wales producing first class beers."

Our website has been relaunched, with more information available, and a new, "behind the sceens" database that will enable us to keep everyone up to date with what we're up to here in the Brewery, and which beers are currently available.
The Shop section of the website has also been updated, and whilst we still lack credit card facilities, (this will change soon, we hope!), we can now accept orders over the 'phone. Call us on 01874 623 731 for more information and details.
Let us know what you think of the new version of the site - click on the Send Us an e-mail button now!

Brecon County Ale has won the gold medal in the Bitters Class for the third year running and Golden Valley was the joint winner of the Best Bitters Class for the second year in sucession. Ramblers Ruin was also a finalist in the competition, but lost out to the overall winner, Bullmastiff Son of a Bitch.

One of Wales’s newest breweries, the award winning Breconshire Brewery, has teamed up with the UK’s oldest agricultural society to toast the importance of Welsh farming. Head brewer, Justin "Buster" Grant, is launching Brecknock Best, brewed in the style of a Best Bitter, to mark the 250th anniversary of the Brecknockshire Agricultural Society.

“I’m delighted to be able to dedicate our new seasonal beer to the Brecknockshire Agricultural.Society”, says Justin. “There’s a long and happy association between beer and farming and at the Breconshire Brewery we use malted barley from West Wales. “We use English hops, but we’d love to use Welsh if we could persuade someone to produce them for us. It’s great to be able to mark such an important event as the Brecknockshire Agricultural Society’s 250th anniversary and we look forward to supplying lots of pints on show day”.

Beer drinkers will appreciate that, with an abv of 4.5%, the Brecknock Best has a floral nose and ‘a distinctive hoppy taste to compliment’. Its malty sweetness is said to give way to a pleasant astringency derived from the Pilot and Bramling Cross hops. The hoppy bitterness persists into the aftertaste to provide a refreshing zing and a distinct moorishness.

Looking forward to sampling the new beer is Show Chairman, Charles de Winton. He is delighted with the initiative and feels it’s yet another extension of the work begun so long ago by the Society’s founding fathers.

“Local landowners Penry Williams and Charles Powell were determined to alleviate the terrible poverty in the countryside”, he says. “They did all they could to innovate and improve. And they sought to add value to agricultural produce.

“I’m not sure what they’d have thought of the beer. The Brecknockshire Agricultural Society evolved from the old Hunting Club and when members realised ‘it was impossible to do business when drunk’ they refrained from drinking during the meetings!”

The new beer carries the crest of the Society on the pump clip, and casks of the beer will be available in pubs throughout Mid, South and West Wales, and possibly even further afield. The Brewery was set up in 2002 by Howard Marlow of Brecon-based wholesaler and distributors C.H.Marlow. Since then the brewery has won a number of awards including the CAMRA Champion Beer of Wales award for its Golden Valley - this award was recently presented at a ceremony in the Welsh Assembly.

HRH Prince of Wales is Patron of the Society and is taking a keen interest in the celebrations. The Society has also commissioned the Institute of Welsh Affairs to produce a report, The Future of Upland Wales, to mark the anniversary.

The beer is available now and will be until after the Brecon County Show in August.

For more details please call the Brewery on 01874 623 731

Winter is coming, and with it, a welcome return for the Breconshire Brewery’s warming Winter Ale : Winter Beacon. This 5.3% abv beer has been described as “As pale as the winter’s Sun over the Beacons, but with the welcoming warming of glow of the fireside after a long walk in the hills”… This beer will be available from mid-November onwards.

A new special beer will flow out of the Breconshire Brewery at the end of October. Given the nights are closing in, and fire festivals are approaching, Head Brewer Buster Grant has decided to mark the celebrations with a new beer - Night Beacon. The 4.9% abv stout will be made with a small proportion of peated malt (as used by Scottish malt whisky distillers) to provide a undertone of warming smokiness to this dark brew. More information will be available closer to the time….

The season for Welsh Beer Festivals starts soon, and the Breconshire Brewery will be involved in these once again. Our beers will be available at the Eco-Festival in Boncath West Wales over the weekend of 11th and 12th of September. The Following weekend sees a new Beer Festival hosted by Gwent CAMRA at the the Abergavenny Food Festival - Look out for the Green Dragon there! The weekend after that (24th-26th September) sees us at another new Beer Festival, this time at the Narberth Food Festival. The following weekend (1st- 3rd October) is the date for the Carmarthen CAMRA Beer Festival, in Notts Hall in the centre of Carmarthen. This popular event was extremely successful last year, and Golden Valley carried off the title of Beer of the Festival. The biggest beer festival in Wales takes place the following weekend, (7th-9th October), in Cardiff. Once again, the City Hall plays host to the CAMRA Great Welsh Beer and Cider Festival, which is also the venue for the judging of the prestigeous CAMRA Champion Beer of Wales Competition. Last year we managed to win a gold medal for the Brecon County Ale, (also 4th overall), and both Golden Valley and Ramblers Ruin won silver medals. We’re hoping to better those results this year! Watch this space…

Following various reports in trade and national press, we are proud to announce that the Welsh Assembly building is no longer a Real Ale Desert! Following the intervention of David Davies, the leader of the Assembly Beer Group, (with a little addional help from Head Brewer Justin “Buster” Grant!), Assembly members can now enjoy Bottle Conditioned Golden Valley in the Assembly Bar. Other beers will be available soon, and occasionally, draft ale will be at the bar as well…