Great Orme Brewery reaches new peak with lager production

An award winning microbrewer hopes to spearhead a lager revival in North Wales with a brand new brew made from soft Snowdonia water.

1085 Snowdon’s Lager, from the Great Orme Brewery, is a labour of love for brewer Jonathan Hughes. He developed the beer to take advantage of the water that feeds his Glan Conwy microbrewery.

Hughes said: “This part of the country has very soft water, which is the best kind to use when brewing lager, in fact it would be a missed opportunity not to. Since setting up Great Orme Brewery in 2005, it has been an ambition of mine to to produce lager here.”

Early sales of 1085, named after the height of Wales’ most famous landmark, have been promising. However Hughes, whose Celtica beer was voted CAMRA Champion Golden Ale of Wales 2010, admited that moving into the lager market was a gamble.

He said: “There has been a huge resurgence in real ales because people recognise the quality and variety of beers available. Meanwhile the lager market is huge, but diminishing and dominated by the kind of large scale brewers that once monopolised the bitter and ale markets.

“I feel that the time is right for a lager that breaks the mould of mass production, brewed using the same standards of quality and flavour that customers have come to expect from real ales.”

Hughes is no stranger to taking on a challenge. As a consultant to the food industry, he noticed a trend for people wanting locally sourced food and drink. When his family’s dairy farm was being wound down, he took a gamble and moved from the south-east to set up a microbrewery.

Great Orme Brewery was founded in 2005, with that first brew the gamble paid off when it won it’s first CAMRA award.

Hughes also plans to break the mould in not selling 1085 Snowdon’s Lager through supermarket chains. While Great Orme Brewery’s real ales are sold through supermarkets, he wants the distribution of the lager to be solely through independent retailers, restaurants, hotels and pubs.

Find out more about the 1085 Snowdon’s Lager and where it is stocked on its Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/1085lager