Brewery investment comes in many shapes and forms, but Verdant, in Cornwall, is the recipient of money via an unusual route — direct capital from a retailer.
The retailer in question is Honest Brew, an “online supermarket for craft beer”, founded in 2012 by Andrew Reeve.
On the Honest Brew blog, he says: “Each year we’ll be dividing £50,000 of funds between numerous breweries from several different locations. This will provide the capital required to purchase brewing and packaging equipment and provide the funding to help independent breweries grow.”
In the space of less than three years, Verdant’s trio of Adam Robertson, James Heffron and Richard White, have taken British brewing by storm, mainly known for hazy, unfiltered, hop-forward pale ales, IPAs, DIPAs and DDH brews. There is an occasional darker beer, though — in fact, I’m sure one being brewed in a recent Tweet.
Earlier this year, Verdant was named best new brewery in the UK by ratebeer.com
On the Verdant blog, Adam Robertson said: “In return for an investment of £20,000 for us to spend on new fermentation vessels, we get to increase our capacity and Honest Brew get a continuing supply of our beers for their customers.
“We have coupled the investment with an EU grant (what have they ever done for us) that we have successfully been offered and the two funds together allow us to purchase two new double-size fermenters bringing our brew length up to 8,000 litres a week. Still small batch, but a 125% increase on what we were producing this time last year.”
