Beer of the Day: Butcombe + Hawkstone Hops & Glory

Well, this feels like a rather good way to finish. Hawkstone has made its first-ever cask beer – and our final Beer of the Day comes from a landlord who knows a thing or two about a great pint.

Owain Jones, co-owner of The Plough at West Hanney, has chosen Hops & Glory, the new 4.2% Real English Pale Ale from Hawkstone and Butcombe. Owain and his team run a community-owned village pub where cask is very much part of the furniture – The Plough has been recognised repeatedly by its local CAMRA branch and has built a reputation for keeping a cracking pint. So when something genuinely new arrives on the handpull, he’s exactly the sort of person we want to hear from.

And Hops & Glory really is new territory. This is Hawkstone’s first-ever cask beer. The Cotswolds brewery has made its name with lager and modern British beer, with Jeremy Clarkson perhaps its most recognisable champion, but for its first trip onto the handpull it has teamed up with a brewery that knows cask inside out. Butcombe has been brewing since 1978, giving the collaboration almost half a century of cask experience to draw upon. It’s a meeting of two different generations of British brewing – and rather wonderfully, they’ve chosen to do it with a beer that puts British ingredients front and centre.

Hops & Glory is brewed using 100% British ingredients, including Maris Otter barley and six varieties of British-grown hops. The result is pale, bright and refreshing, with grapefruit, orange peel and gentle tropical fruit before a crisp, satisfyingly bitter finish. It’s traditional enough to feel completely at home on a handpull, but with the bright, punchy hop character you’d expect from a modern pale ale. A first cask beer that actually feels like a first cask beer – not an imitation of something that came before.

There’s another reason we love this collaboration. Every cask sold raises £10 for two charities supporting the people at the heart of British pubs and farming. The Licensed Trade Charity has been helping people working in pubs, bars and hospitality for more than 200 years, providing practical, emotional and financial support when times get difficult. Shout provides free, confidential mental-health support by text, including vital support for people in farming communities. Behind every pint are growers, brewers, dray teams, cellar staff and publicans – real people – so it feels particularly fitting that Hawkstone and Butcombe are using their first cask together to give something back.

And perhaps that’s why this makes such a good final Beer of the Day for Cask Ale Week. We’ve spent the week celebrating beers with decades – sometimes centuries – of history behind them. Hops & Glory points in the other direction. It’s a brand making its first move into cask, working with an experienced cask brewer, using British-grown ingredients, supporting pubs and farming, and putting something genuinely new on the handpull.

So if you spot Hops & Glory on the bar, follow Owain’s lead and order one while you can – it’s only around for a limited time. Hawkstone’s first cask. Two breweries. Six British hops. Two brilliant causes. One community pub landlord giving it the thumbs-up. If this is what Hawkstone’s first crack at cask looks like, we’re rather interested to see what comes next. Cheers to that – and cheers to Cask Ale Week!