Six members of the Lodge attended the final of a series of ‘Meet the Brewer’ evenings organised by Noble Green Wines at their emporium in Hampton Hill. The featured brewery was the ‘TWO COCKS BREWERY’ based near Newbury in wildest West Berkshire. Michael and Phil, who own the brewery started brewing purely by chance when, having given up their business’s in London to move to a 40 acre working farm, they sunk a borehole to provide a ready supply of water to support their
rare breed livestock and then noticed that they had hops growing in the hedgerows around their farm.
Some of these hops are wild and are thought to originate from 300 year old hop gardens. Whilst these are used in current brews, they buy in specialist hops and barley which give the beers their interesting and varied flavours. They supply both bottled and barrel beer with names all drawn from the location of the farm, which is on the site of Roundhead camp at thetime of the first battle of Newbury. The bottles all have a coloured feather stuck on the label which makes them stand out from the crowd. Following the tasting, we moved along Hampton Hill High Street to a local Italian restaurant where we enjoyed a late supper and a fair amount of excellent wine chosen by the Lodge’s own sommelier, Larry Hands.