The Old Dairy Brewery, a bustling microbrewery in Tenterdon, Ashford
Old Dairy Brewery is a Microbrewery based in Tenterden, Ashford.
Born in 2010, moved to larger premises in 2014 to brew a range of beers, English bitters and pale ales across the UK mainly to pubs and farm shops and some South Eastern Co-Ops. Real ale is best seller, started to do some canning recently as part of lockdown trying to come up with new ideas.
Virginia Hodge says “we are looking forward to going back to our brewery tours and opening up the tap room for people to enjoy the full experience”
Their story:
Old Dairy Brewery started life in 2009 in a converted dairy in Rolvenden. In 2015, due to the popular demand for our beers, we moved to our new larger brewery in Tenterden – we are now housed in two World War II Nissen huts.
As we brew in the ‘Garden of England’, we believe our beers should be brewed using Kent hops. We brew with English hops grown just 3 miles from us by family hop grower, Hukins Hops of Biddenden.
Lots has changed since we first started brewing and we have changed with the times. We found it hard to decide what beer styles to choose over the years, so we have taken some of our favourites and added our own twist to some whereas others could simply not be improved.
We are passionate about what we are doing here and we think you will be too.
For the last 3 years working with the local council and Visit Kent the microbrewery has been attracting people from overseas and who are on a day out when people come to visit the steam railway and grab lunch.
“We have two arms of our business- direct to hospitality trade and we have a brewery shop and online shop which has had to adapt to then take over as the main business when the pubs closed down” says Virginia.
They have had to pivot a lot during a really tough year with very few sales coming in at all. 2020 they added in the free local delivery initially, minimum staff and doing all of the packing themselves to keep costs down and now they have adapted to click and collect with a lot of learning on the go.
“In the summer we opened again, working with local Italian food truck using our garden space where people could buy a beer and enjoy some food as well”
How can you support them:
By purchasing from our online shop or liking and sharing our social media content.
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Check out The Old Dairy Brewery live along with other local businesses here in Ashford’s High Street Guide and see who else you can discover in Ashford #shoplocal #Ashford
