The annual Fleetwood Beer Festival takes place this year over Valentine’s weekend, 14th, 15th and 16th February.  Programme notes for the Hart Brewery, as they will appear in the festival programme, are printed below:

THE HART BREWERY

                        Next year this busy and successful brewery will be celebrating its 15^th anniversary. Opened in 1994 in Preston it moved the following year to its current home in the stable block behind the historic Cartford Inn at Great Eccleston. Brewer, John Smith, with his immense enthusiasm, great sense of humour, but, above all, enormous talent as a brewer, is turning out beers that simply get better and better. Having a great local reputation, the beers are available in a dozen or so local pubs and clubs, but I find, on my travels around the country, his beers are very popular nationally as they become available through his system of arranging “swops” with other quality breweries. Fifteen years of working hard to fine tune and improve his regular beers has resulted in the brewery having a portfolio of top class, quality beers.

                        Most locals know of the unique way the brewery came into being, but the story bears repeating. Before 1994 John was an enthusiastic home brewer and the more his friends and neighbours tasted the beer the more popular became and gained a reputation. John needed to know whether his beer really was so good or was it just a case of people drinking it because it was free. By way of an experiment, he set up a small bar in his Preston garage and began to sell his beer, demand was so great that he needed to brew more and more of the stuff. Inevitably HM Customs and Excise heard about the venture and demanded their share in taxes. It led to John having to pay a huge fine and that seemed to be the end of his little enterprise. But there’s a twist in the tale, the Customs Officer prosecuting the case considered John’s beer to be so good that he sat down with him and came up with plans that would let the brewery continue on a “legitimate and properly commercial” basis and John could live his dream of becoming a professional brewer. It just so happened that the Customs Officer was a friend of Andrew Mellodew, legendary proprietor and landlord of the Cartford Hotel in Little Eccleston, beside the River Wyre. Andrew too had an ambition, which was to have a small micro-brewery on the grounds of his iconic pub that could service his pub and sell the surplus to the free-trade. An agreement over a beer and we had a happy ending, John was a brewer and Andrew had his brewery. That successful partnership continued until last year when Andrew decided to take a rest from the business and sold the business to Julie and Patrick Beaume, wisely and thankfully they have continued to support Hart brewery; it must be a terrific asset to the business to have an in-house brewery as an attraction. Speaking of Andrew Mellodew, I doubt if he’s finished with the real ale business, watch this space!

                        A number of Hart beers will be available at this festival, their beers are classy and of an unusually high quality. Try the award winning Ice Maiden, see why it was named “Lancashire’s Champion Beer.” Hart beers can often be found in local pubs including the branch “Pub of the Season” the Thatched House in Poulton-le-Fylde. To learn more about the brewery and to order the beers (incidentally they are now available in “take-home packs” from the brewery checkout the new web-site: www.hartbreweryltd.co.uk .