E-Malt.com News article: 3358

UK: Welsh brewing entrepreneur Simon Buckley is back in business, launching on September 29 the first ales produced by his new West Wales brewery. The Evan-Evans brewery aims to produce one million pints of ale a year and create up to 40 jobs. Simon Buckley, plans a visitor centre and pub for the two-acre site next year. Mr Buckley, a member of Wales's oldest brewing family will be rolling out three new beers over the next month, all of which are produced at his Evan-Evans brewery in Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire.

Evan-Evans started brewing trials in July and the company will be rolling out three brands over the next month: Best Bitter, Cwrw and SBA. “We hope that the beer lovers of Wales will at last have a brand they can identify as a generic Welsh brand of beer from west Wales,” Simon Buckley said.

The cask conditioned beer - Cwrw go iawn Cymru - is named after the mediaeval warrior-poet Lewis Glyn Cothi who lived at nearby Brechfa Mr Buckley said: "This is a real Welsh brand, designed to give the Welsh drinking public a genuine Welsh brewed beer. "One of the first recorded mentions of the term Cwrw - Welsh for beer or ale - was in the work of the Fifteenth Century bard, Lewis Glyn Cothi. "This renowned poet and philosopher praised the hops of Herefordshire, then part of Wales, which are now used to brew Evan-Evans.

"Cwrw is an everyday part of the Welsh language and we hope that the beer lovers of Wales will at last have a brand they can identify as a generic Welsh brand of beer from west Wales." He said the brewery would create 10 new jobs over the next six months and a further 30 when the visitor centre and pub open next year. The new brewing plant had to be shipped from Canada, where manufacturers specialise in supplying smaller breweries, according to BBC. The plant was purpose-built in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Mr Buckley's family started brewing in Llanelli in 1767. The brewery is named after his ancestor William Evan-Evans, a west Wales brewer who married into the Buckley family in the mid 1800's. The company will be holding a brewery open day on Saturday when members of the public will be able to look around the new brewery, and taste free of charge, the new beers.


01 October, 2004