About us

Shalford Brewery is a five barrel microbrewery built and installed at a farm in the Pant Valley in Essex. Brewing commenced in July 2007. Using finest malt, hops and yeast Brewer Nigel Lawes tries to create interesting and different as well as traditional real ales for the discerning real ale drinker. Both cask and bottle conditioned beers are available. Shalford was proud to be nominated and short listed for Champion Beer of Britain at the Great British Beer Festival 2008.

Beer making has changed little over the centuries and the process of mashing, sparging, boiling and fermenting used today would be very familiar to our ancestors even if some of the equipment and delivery methods have changed. The varying of malt and hops to obtain just the right balance of taste and body remains an everlasting challenge and recipes are as precious as the one for “Granny’s home made boozy sticky toffee pudding.”

Bottle-conditioned ales (real ales in a bottle) are unfiltered and unpasteurized beers. They need to be stored upright and allowed to clear before pouring or else the yeast sediment with which the beer is primed is disturbed.

The wonderful thing about real ales is their variety and uniqueness. Not homogenised, pasteurized, bland and carbon copied but as different from each other as the brewers who craft them.

Where to Try?

In addition to the newly created on-line shopThe George Inn, Shalford, is the most local pub to the brewery where you can try draught Shalford Beers, it is also available at a number of Free Houses in Essex and Suffolk. A range of bottled beers is also stocked at The Shalford Village Stores, The Blue Egg Great Bardfield, Greenstead Green Farm Shop, Farmer Browns Farm Shop Mount Bures, Lords Farm Shop. For more details please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Brewing in progress.

Brewing is almost certainly the most ancient manufacturing art known to man, and is probably as old as agriculture. That makes Beer as old as bread - in fact it is probable that either beer or bread may have been a by-product of the other. At the end of the 17th century, the weekly allowance for pupils of all ages at one English school was two bottles a day. Beer was a good deal safer and more palatable than the available drinking water which was often drawn from polluted rivers. The good news is that although the methods have not changed for centuries, the standards of hygiene and safety have. Brewing on Farms was very common until recent times, the harvesting gangs who contracted from farm to farm throughout the summer months would have expected a daily ration of ale to sweep the dust of harvest from their throats, and not forgetting the ritual of celebrating the end of harvest with the Horkey Supper where no doubt more than a few glasses of beer would have been lifted.

© 2007, Shalford Brewery visits 1
All trademarks and registered trademarks appearing on this site are the property of their respective owners.