Brewery of the Day: Palmers
If you were asked to imagine the perfect home for cask ale, you might come up with an old thatched brewery beside a river, a mile from the Jurassic Coast, with its own spring, a working Victorian waterwheel and more than 230 years of brewing history. The brilliant thing is, you don’t have to imagine it – it exists. Welcome to Palmers Brewery in Bridport, where there has been continuous brewing on the same site since 1794. Still independent, still family-run and now with the fifth generation of the Palmer family involved, this is a brewery where history isn’t something hanging on the wall – it’s still very much at work.
And for beer lovers, the Old Brewery is rather special. Palmers is the UK’s only thatched brewery, and inside you’ll still find a traditional mash tun and open copper, while a huge waterwheel dating from 1879 remains in working order. The ales are made with water from Palmers’ own natural spring, Maris Otter malt and whole-leaf hops, before being cask conditioned. But this isn’t brewing preserved in aspic: modern brewing knowledge and quality control work alongside all that wonderful old kit. Palmers is particularly serious about what happens between brewery and glass too, investing in cellar training, storage and transport to make sure its cask reaches the drinker as it should. Cask Marque has apparently described them as “obsessive” about quality. We suspect Palmers took that as a compliment.
And more than 230 years after the first brew, the place is still full of life. Palmers now has 53 pubs across the West Country, as well as supplying free houses, and this September its Beer Festival returns to the historic brewery itself, raising money for the Palmers Brewery Community Fund. We love the whole picture: a fiercely independent family brewery, beautiful pubs, a waterwheel that has been turning since Queen Victoria was on the throne and live cask ale still being brewed on the site where the story began. If you want to show someone that cask isn’t simply part of Britain’s brewing history but a living, breathing part of its future, Palmers is a pretty wonderful place to start.
Discover more: Visit Palmers Brewery and read about this year’s Palmers Brewery Beer Festival in Bridport.