Church Wilne Rotary members were treated to a presentation by Pat Bevan and Greg Maskalick on their experiences in setting up their Micro Brewery, which is named the Draycott Brewing Company - Derbyshire, at their meeting on Monday 5th January.

Pat who is an engineer looks after the business side and problem solving and Greg, who is a musician and teacher, is mainly in charge of the processing and production but naturally both share a love of beer.

Pat gave the members an overview of how they set up their micro brewery last August and said the beauty of the micro brewery is that you can start small and you don't have to have a massive investment. Their signature beers are the Golden Nugget which is light in colour, Butchers Bitter a traditional beer and Millers Beer a darker quality with a distinctive taste

Their first Beer Festival was at the Royal Oak in Ockbrook last October and Camera were so impressed that they invited them to the Nottingham Beer Festival which is the third largest festival in the UK and they sold out their stock. They are now booked to be at the Sheffield, Derby, Leicester and Chesterfield festivals during this year.

Greg then continued by covering his tour last year of many US breweries and went on the explain the process of making the various qualities and spoke in detail about the  wide variety of hops and malts and also passed them around to the members to touch and smell.

It was explained that the science in production is also linked to trial and error because of the wide variety of the ingredients available and naturally many present offered their future services as tasters.

Currently their fermentation vessels contain 65 litres and they intend to move up to 500 and 1,000 stainless steel litre tanks in the near future. The business is moving on faster than was expected and they have just moved out of their first premises in Draycott to a larger nearby building.

There were many questions from the members including how quickly is the product ready for sale, beer duty and more taster volunteers.

The Club's vote of thanks was given by Gary Dundas who said he likes real beer and he thanked Pat and Greg for telling us about their  beginning and wished them every success in the future.

Photograph:  Pat Bevan (left) with Greg Maskalick.

Ray Terry
for the Rotary Club of Church Wilne.

For more information on Rotary and our speaker evenings, please contact Rotarian John Astell at: rccw1220@gmail.com