A brewery is showing loyalty to British agriculture by using only British grown produce to create its range of beers.
Tom Wood’s Beer in Lincolnshire is one of only approximately ten breweries in Britain to use all British ingredients in every beer it produces.
It sources malt from Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and East Anglia, as well as hops from Kent and Herefordshire.
Brewery manager Tom Wood believes that “ingredients are absolutely key” and that Britain can produce some great products.
He said that “you can’t make great beer with poor ingredients” and that he felt it unnecessary to go hunting elsewhere when it was possible to make some really great flavoured beers using only British ingredients.
With the number of craft brewers on the rise, Tom believes that there is huge demand for hops.
He said he would like to see more hop gardens in the UK after many years of demise and, with prices of hops going up, he said it was becoming more viable for British farmers.
'Brave new world'
It is not only the British who are enjoying their own local produce, demand for British barley is soaring in China due to their emerging beer market.
Cereal growers are on the verge of a "brave new world" as the Chinese market is now open to exports of barley, AHDB Cereals has said.
This year, the Chinese are looking to import seven million tonnes and the UK could have as much as 150,000 tonnes worth £20 million available.
All the necessary permissions are now in place to give the UK access to mainland China which is a massive and growing market.
Though the harvest has not yet finished there will be a surplus which could find a ready home in the Far East as China requires grain from assured sources.
AHDB Head of Crops Export Trade Development, Rob Burns said: “Our export team worked for years to gain access to the market and now we have opened the doors, it is a market that can be developed.
“We are in a strong position as in previous years we have had about a million tonnes of barley available for export each year.”
Demand for barley in China has been growing fuelled by a large and fast-growing beer market while domestic production has, at the same time, been in decline.
