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The Barngates brewery sits behind the Drunken Duck inn, formerly called the Barngates Inn, on a crossroads between Ambleside and Coniston.
The brewery was set up by John Lloyd in 1997 with help from the ubiquitous Peter Yates. Originally a one barrel plant, demand for Cracker
ale soon grew and in 1999 a custom-made 5 barrel plant was installed. Head brewer John must have been fairly happy with the way the brewery
was going, because in 2004 he took off on a one year sabbatical, travelling in New Zealand. In the meantime the brewery was being
ably run by existing brewer Simon Bray, who has been at Barngates for 5 years, and new brewer Chris Williams. Chris hadn’t brewed before but
having worked for a number of years as a YHA manager around the Lake District he was used to turning his hand to whatever job needed doing, and
he has always enjoyed his real ale. However, he has now left the brewery (2008)
Malt comes from Fawcetts and hops from Farams: Fuggles, First Gold, Progress and Cluster are used. Yeast, amazingly, is still the original
strain from Yates brewery.
New plant installed at Easter with minimal disruption to production. Now a 10 barrel plant, currently producing 22.5 barrels p/w.
Size of workforce increased to 4. (updated June 2008)
Four beers are now produced, all named after ex-pets at the Drunken Duck: Catnap (3.6%); Cracker Ale (3.9%); Tag Lag (4.4%) and Chesters
Strong and Ugly (5.2%). Tag Lag is now the biggest seller. Brewing takes place 2 or 3 times a week, and supplies pubs all over Cumbria and
into North Lancashire and Yorkshire. Tag Lag is also bottled by Hambleton brewery; it is filtered but not pasteurised so qualifies as ‘real
ale in a bottle’; recent customers include Booths. Unfortunately there are few regular cask Barngates outlets in West Cumbria but it appears as a
guest in some places.