Stroud Brewery is celebrating winning 10 awards during the past six weeks at local, county, and regional levels — with the potential for a national award.
Stroud Brewery founder Greg Pilley with some of the awards
These have covered all aspects of the brewery: its beer, its taproom, and the business as a whole. And now it’s a finalist in a national award for its environmental and ethical work.
However, for the brewery the real celebration is the vote of confidence these awards represent from its customers, its local communit, and its brewing and business peers. The awards recognise its approach to combining high-quality beer-making with running the business in a responsible and ethical way.
“When I set up the brewery in 2006, I wanted to make great beer which brought people together to talk, laugh, and learn, and to be at the heart of my local community,” said Greg Pilley, founder and managing director of Stroud Brewery.
“My background as an ecologist, working in wildlife conservation and in local food production, meant that using organic ingredients and thinking about the impact the business had on the environment became part of the business model early on. When I started the brewery 17 years ago, this approach was virtually unheard of in the industry.”
For Greg and the brewery’s team, these awards are heartening recognition that taste and quality aren’t compromised by using organic ingredients and making its operations more environmentally friendly. The brewery is now urging all breweries to embrace sustainability and produce drinks that can both give customers a great product and help to regenerate the planet.
Readers of the brewery’s local newspaper, Stroud News & Journal, voted it business of the year in its inaugural Community Heroes Awards. This award means a lot to the brewery. It wouldn’t exist without its local community. Their investments enabled the brewery to get started, and it then raised more than £114,000 in crowdfunding to keep the brewery afloat when the pandemic made its position precarious.
SoGlos honoured the brewery with the titles of Gloucestershire’s lifestyle business of the year and pub/bar of the year. There was stiff competition as the county is home to a plethora of innovative businesses providing top-class customer service, as well as wonderful pubs or bars at every turn. Once more, the success was thanks to votes by customers and the public, plus the decision of SoGlos’ judging panel of local business experts.
The Society of Independent Breweries (SIBA) awarded gold to four of Stroud Brewery’s beers — Budding, Hop Drop, Easy Peazy, and Light Organic Lager — in its Wales and West beer competition. Light Organic Lager also claimed the overall winner’s title in the category for bottled and canned session lager up to 4.4% ABV. Light Organic Lager goes through to the national finals at the BeerX festival in Liverpool early next year.
The golds continued at the Taste of the West awards when the judges awarded gold in the beer category to the brewery’s Big Cat organic stout, accompanied by silver for Budding organic pale ale and Easy Peasy organic session ale.
The brewery has also announced that it’s made the finals of the sustainable pub of the year category of the Great British Pub Awards, run by the Morning Advertiser. The winners are announced in September.
