Who's keeping Britain's oldest brewery alive? - John Hatch, Londoner #62

• Report rights infringement
• published: 22 Jan 2015
• views: 12004

John is a passionate connoisseur of beer and brewing. From a very young age he worked for the award-winning Young’s which brewed its beer at The Ram, the oldest brewery in the country with records going back to 1533. In 2006, Youngs announced that they had sold the site to property developers. John was stunned that this crucial part of British brewing history was going to be lost, and offered to keep the brewery going on a smaller scale. In the nine years since, he has brewed one batch of beer every week on a non-commercial basis to keep the records going until the site is redeveloped with a new micro-brewery. John is still brewing in his makeshift brewery, where donations from visitors keep the beer flowing. As the site has been used regularly as a filming location, guests to the brewery have included the cast and crew of Misfits, Ashes to Ashes, Silent Witness and Cockneys Versus Zombies. He also holds regular comedy nights in his sample room. 1000 LONDONERS This film is part of 1000 Londoners, a five-year digital project which aims to create a digital portrait of a city through 1000 of the people who identify themselves with it. The profile contains a 3 minute film that gives an insight into the life of the Londoner, as well as their personal photos of London and some answers to crucial questions about their views on London life. Over the course of the project we aim to reveal as many facets of the capital as possible, seeing city life from 1000 points of view. www.1000londoners.com www.youtube.com/1000londoners www.facebook.com/1000londoners Twitter: @1000_londoners 1000 Londoners is produced by South London based film production company and social enterprise, Chocolate Films. The filmmakers from Chocolate Films will be both producing the films and providing opportunities to young people and community groups to make their own short documentaries, which will contribute to the 1000 films. Visit www.chocolatefilms.com Transcript: Well this was Britain’s oldest brewery. Brewing continuously, we know, since at least 1533 and I thought that was heritage well worth maintaining. But I don’t expect everyone else to agree with me. But it’s nice when they do, it’s lovely. 2006, Youngs chose the day of my birthday to announce they were going to shut later that year. So it wasn’t a great birthday to be perfectly honest. Now it’s just a case of stirring it in. Most breweries have got a very technical mechanical way of doing it. I’ve just got a big stick. Youngs sold the brewery to Minerva and I spoke to Minerva pretty early on actually because I wanted to try and save the brewery. And I said, well, we can brew once a week as token gesture, maintain the records and that way you still have Britain's oldest brewery. So these are details of all the materials I've used so far, I think Youngs have got the same format going back until at least I think 1910 or something. I then transfer all this information into an old leather- bound ledger with details of all the brews we've ever done here really - it just helps with tradition, and it's just, it's got a nice feel to it - I don't know why I like it so much. To be perfectly honest you would never design a brewery like this, I mean it works, it makes beer but it is pretty haphazard, but it was just thrown together. This was part of the old tea urn from the canteen with a bit of welding and few things added on to it, lots of insulation. I am actually quite proud of this, I really am, it's got a part of me in it. Right, ok. Almost every week I face a new challenge I'm always dreaming of the day I can have a nice easy brewery which doesn't need me running about with a spanner every 5 minutes. Unfortunately we've got a bit of a veto situation on commercial brewing at the moment so we can't sell any beer. First couple of months there were a few of us basically putting hands into our own pockets and buying the molten hops and after a while of course that became jolly expensive. One of the guys had this brilliant idea of putting an honesty box in the sample room- and he said people could put money into it, and he said we're not forcing them to - we're not selling the beer as such. But we are lucky with the comedy nights so I owe a great deal to the comedians just to fund me. The Ram brewery is being really developed into a nice town centre and the micro brewery itself will move into what I call the porter tun room - porter being an old style London beer so it's rather a good place for it to be really. So I've gone from 5000 barrels a week maximum to a half barrel a week maximum, but it's still brewing which I'm delighted by. Click the videos to watch more Londoners and don't forget to subscribe.