A tiny brewery run from a converted garage on the edge of the New Forest has won the ‘Beer of the Festival’ award at Salisbury Summerfest 2024.
The Dead Duck Brewery is run by teacher Paul Bartlett from his garage in Hale on the Hampshire/Wiltshire border. His ‘nano-brewery’ has only been going for two years, but festival-goers at Summerfest voted for his porter ‘Knightwood Oak’ by a clear margin.
Summerfest the beer and cider festival was held last month by the Salisbury & South Wiltshire branch of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA).
Paul’s Knightwood Oak is a 5% chocolate porter produced at Hale, near Downton. The Duck Duck brewery’s fulsome brew easily won the vote by festival-goers against competition from 29 other real ales.
“I am blown away by winning this award,” said Paul, a teacher who brews in his spare time, when a party from CAMRA paid him a visit and festivals co-ordinator Andrew Hesketh presented him with his first-ever winner’s certificate.
Knightwood Oak is named after the largest and probably the oldest tree in the New Forest.
Andrew Hesketh said, “Paul is an exceptionally talented brewer and our festival-goers, most of whom know a thing or two about beer, voted for this smooth chocolate porter by a considerable majority. We congratulate him”.
Paul, who teaches creative arts at the New Forest Academy in Hythe, began brewing 10 years ago when he lived in a London flat and was given a home brew kit as a Christmas present.
He was determined to make each successive brew better until it became, as his wife Louise put it, “a hobby that got out of control”.
When they moved to Hale to be nearer their respective families, the garage seemed the perfect building to convert into a small brewery using a two-barrel system.
“I thought that the brewery would never succeed so I gave it the name ‘Dead Duck’ as a joke,” said Paul. “I am being proved wrong.”
Paul now brews a total of four beers and these are available at a number of pubs in the area, including The Horse and Groom in Woodgreen and the Royal Oak at Fritham.
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