Stonehouse Brewery was started earlier in 2007 by Australian Shane Parr (if the accent doesn't quite fit he spent much of his childhood in New Zealand). He was originally brewer a few miles away at Offa's Dyke. The building is a huge former chicken shed and with the surrounding land, Shane has vast amounts of space for his activities.
The van's livery displays the brewery logo - the brewery site is next to the engine shed of the preserved(?) Cambrian Railway, which is not sure where it's going at the moment.
Stonehouse brewer Shane Parr
Shane Parr's Welsh-born wife and brewery worker Alison, the one at the brewery 'bar' with the big jugs. Her father Iain has been dragged out of retirement to reinvent brewing technology.
Alison and father Iain at the bar, as the Wakefield CAMRA crew sample the wares. Photo by Bob Whitehead.
On the right is Shane and Alison's cottage. As Marks & Spencer mightsay, this is not just a forklift, it's a vital piece of brewing machinery, used for feeding the mash tun with crushed grist from the specially adapted grist case (it has runners for the forks).
Because of the relatively low headroom in a chicken shed, two fillings of the custom grist case are needed per brew.
Shane relates how sympathetic bank managers are to microbrewers when it comes to start-up loans. The failure rate of small businesses as a whole is 3 in 5, but with microbrewers the success rate is currently 3 in 5.
In the foreground is the mash tun. Note the runners for the forklift on the grist hopper. A black square tube jig helps position the grist hopper over the mash tun.
This vessel didn't start out life as a brewing copper. It's fired by a powerful adaptation of a gas heating furnace.
interior of the copper showing heating tube - hefty stuff
On the left is the cold liquor tank, something from a dairy, and on the right the hot liquor tank where water warmed via the heat exchanger during the cooling of the wort is stored so that the next brew does not have to start with clap cold water. It's not graffiti on the outer walls of the tank: they've been marking the areas where there doesn't seem to be any insulation, so that holes can be drilled and polyurethane foam injected.
We are seeing a brewery barely half a year into its development. Through clean white doors the fermentation room with its perfectly lagged FVs and smooth clean walls shows how the Parrs intend it to be.
Stonehouse casks next to the Cold Liquor tank, photo by Bob Whitehead
In the gloom of the conditioning room Shane's father-in-law Iain fills more jugs with award-winning ale for the visitors.
One Pom, on the left, Mark Goodair presents a commemorative certificate and festival tankard to Shane whilst Wakefield's Vanessa Shaw, who we all are surprised to learn is also Australian born, looks on.
One of Shane's many pieces of salvaged equipment is this chunky wooden barrel from the Border Brewery of Wrexham.
Wakefield couple Julie and Andy Dawson who run the World Beer bar at Merrie City Beer Festival always have to be photographed together at every brewery we visit.
It's still a chicken shed !
A sneak peek into the engine shed by Bob Whitehead: Locos preserved by members of the Cambrian Railway Society at Western Wharf, next to the Stonehouse Brewery. The two locos were built in 1963 by Ruston & Hornsby Ltd of Lincoln, and were bought for preservation from the former North West Water Authority, Llanforda Hill Waterworks near Oswestry
