Gwent CAMRA Beer Festival

From Brew Wales

The Gwent Branch of the Campaign for Real Ale are once again running a real ale bar at Tredegar House during the Tredegar House Folk Festival. The bar opens at 1900 hrs on Friday 8th of May 2009 and we have some wonderful real ales for the thirsty customers to try:
Celt Experience Golden
Celt Experience Bronze
Celt Experience Native Storm
Cwmbran Golden Wheat
Cwmbran Pink Panther
Cwmbran 4 Seasons
Otley O1
Otley 02
Otley O-garden
Purple Moose Dark Side of the Moose
Purple Moose Snowdonia Ale
Rhymney Brewery Bevans bitter
Rhymney Brewery Dark
Spinning Dog Original Bitter
Spinning Dog Celtic Gold
Spinning Dog Mutts Nutts
Wye Valley HPA
All beers are subject to availability
All served on gravity and at cellar temperature.
In addition, a range of ciders and perries from Gwynt Y Ddraig, the Welsh cider and perry company will also be available.
Free Entry to the site.
Bar open
Friday 8th May 1900-2300
Sat 9th May 1200-2300
Sun 10th May 1200-2230.
Tredegar House is easily accesable by bus number 36 from Newport city Centre or from the M4, junction 28.
For information on brewing at Tredegar House check out this previous blog
And there is even a blog devoted to Tredegar House here.

Map of area around Tredegar House below:

View Larger Map

Brewing at Tredegar House

The Gwent Branch of CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, may be running a real ale bar at the Newport Folk Festival this weekend but the story of beer at the historic house goes back further. Nowadays visitors to the house can enjoy a meal in “The Old Brewhouse” which as its name suggests was the brewery for the house and estate. An unusual two-story building, it is more reminiscent of a maltings than a brewery – the long, wide profile would give a large surface area for kilning barley. But then again most of us are used to seeing 19th Century tower breweries – the brewhouse here is far older – it is clearly marked on a map of 1770, along with the barn opposite and brewing was carried out here at least 100 years earlier. The present facade of Tredegar House dates from the 17th Century but there are parts dating from the medieval period so brewing was likely to have been carried out here from that time.
An inventory of 1688 lists the contents of the cellar underneath the house. There were 30 hogsheads for cider and 16 for ale, table beer and small beer as well as 3 vessels holding 4 barrels of ale, 1 vessel holding 3 barrels of ale and one large vessel containing 6 barrels of cider. In 1704 the brewer was called David and was on a wage of £2 10s a year.
In 1688 the brewing equipment consisited of 2 furnaces, 1 cooler, 3 vats, 2 trinds, 3 tubs, 2 lappers, 1 ladle lapper, 20 pails, 1 kettle and 1 iron shovel.
The beer that was brewed here would have been made for both the house and the estate workers, even a funeral of one of the Morgan family in 1719 stipulated a barrel of ale for the mourners.
There are springs nearby providing water for the brewery and the barley and hops were grown on the estate which was about 1000 acres in 1770. A cider mill was also situated on the estate and there were orchards here as well.
There we have it then, a few hundred years ago, if you were a guest of the Morgan family then you would have been offered locally brewed ales and cider at your visit to the house. At the present day Newport Folk Festival, the Campaign for Real Ale offers you a choice of 15 different ales and 10 different ciders. I think the Morgan Family would approve.




The Old Brewhouse

Tredegar House Update

The beer are stillaged and tapped, just waiting for the customers now when we open friday. One small change to the beer list is that Mutts Nuts did not arrive but we've replaced it with Spinning Dog Hereford Cathedral.
Cider from Gwynt Y Ddraig will be arriving shortly, along with a fridge to chill the bottles of Black Dragon, Orchard Gold and the new Perry Vale.
Further Information:
Newport Folk Festival, Tredegar House,
CAMRA bar open Friday 9th May 7-12,
Saturday 10th May 1200-1200,
Sunday 11th May 12-5
www.gwentcamra.org.uk

SPINNING DOG AT NEWPORT FOLK FESTIVAL

Beers from the Spinning Dog Brewery in Hereford will feature at the real ale bar at the Newport Folk Festival at Tredegar House on the weekend of the 9-11th May. The Gwent Branch of CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, will once again be running the bar at the 19th Folk Festival. Gwent CAMRA are aiming to put on a range of the best beers and ciders from the local area and as far away as Herefordshire. Spinning Dog beers will include an Organic beer as well as Celtic Gold and the unusually named Mutt's Nuts, alongside other Herefordshire brewery Wye Valley with their HPA, Butty Bach and Bitter.

Local brews are not left out either with beers from Cwmbran Brewery with their fruity award-winning Blackcurrant Stout on the bar along with Pink Panther – a pink beer, and their malty Four Seasons.
Beers from Rhymney Brewery will also be served – this is a relatively new brewery which takes it's name from an old South Wales brewery that once dominated the area. The current Champion Beer of Wales, Rhymney Dark, will be featured alongside Bevan's Bitter.
A former Champion Beer of Wales winner, Breconshire Brewery will also be at the festival with their Ramblers Ruin, County and Cribyn – an unusual beer in that it's a light mild.
To round off the beer range, another award-winning Welsh brewery, Otley from Pontypridd, will be supplying their OBB and O1.

For those who prefer the apple or pear to the grain and the hop then you will not be left out as multi award-winning Gwynt y Ddraig cider will be bringing their ciders and perries along to the festival. Their ciders are available throughout Wales in supermarkets and pubs but at this festival both bottled and draught products will be available together.

According to James Daley, Gwent CAMRA bar manager, “We have sourced the best Welsh beers and ciders for this festival and we hope we've found something to suit everyone's taste. Newport Folk Festival is our first beer festival of the year and hopefully it will be a good start to the real ale year as next month we have the Great Welsh Beer & Cider Festival at Cardiff International Arena”.

Further Information:
Newport Folk Festival, Tredegar House,
CAMRA bar open Friday 9th May 7-12,
Saturday 10th May 1200-1200,
Sunday 11th May 12-5

James ‘Arfur’ Daley, Gwent CAMRA , 0794 185 9902
www.gwentcamra.org.uk