The Fresh Standard Brew Co

During the lockdowns and temporary openings, we gathered data on openings, times of business and more permanent and temporary closures and sales information (see table below). We have joined campaigns to retain pubs where appropriate, e.g. to reopen the Ram in Woodchester, or we kept in touch with them, e.g. the Star Inn, Whiteshill.

Some pubs in our area opened as shops selling groceries and take away ales and some, in the initial lockdown, provided off sales of ale and in the second lockdown delivered ales and set up WhatApp groups for orders, e.g. The Prince Albert. The Crown and Sceptre was the only pub to stay open all throughout the last 20 months as a shop, selling off sales, when possible, until the full reopening.

We held our first Officers’ meeting in May and our first full members meeting was held in August and we now hold them every second Wednesday of the month at the Ale House Stroud. Members and non-members are all welcome.

We have now completed presentations to our Pub of the Year (POTY), Cider POTY and Club of the Year (COTY). As well as appearing in the following pages, all presentations have been written up in the Stroud and News Journal with pictures, thanks to connections built up by our Pubs Officer, Tim Mars. We have eight pubs in the 2022 GBG which we launched at the Butchers Arms, Sheepscombe on 13th November.

In January and October, the chair wrote to our local MP, Siobhan Baillie, about the plight of pubs and she raised the issue in parliament. Andy Stayte has agreed to become our Pub Data Coordinator. Together with our Chair, Tony Hill, and Tim Mars, he is gradually updating all information about our pubs on What Pub, via Pubzilla.

In February, we had a membership list delivered that contained details of members who had indicated they didn’t wish to be contacted. Along with this list we were also aware that we had a significant number of members for whom we had no email contact. So we decided to investigate the situation to improve our membership contacts and set
about finding them by one means or another. This has been a long and painstaking job, but we are gradually improving our member contact.

Since the pandemic started a new brewery (The Fresh Standard Brew Co) has begun to operate alongside Artisan Ales in Minchinhampton (Jon Kemp is allowing them to cuckoo). The brewer is Richard Taylor, who is one of our active members, and who first worked at Stroud Brewery and then was brewer at Battledown brewery. He is starting to be assisted by his partner Charlotte, and they have produced, in our opinion, some wonderful ales.

Stroud Brewery had to look for some extra capital at the start of the pandemic as they had just moved into new premises and needed to improve their cash flow and reserves. A crowdfunding exercise was set up looking at a figure of £100k which we are all delighted to report that they achieved. The brewery recently put on a weekend event to thank all the contributors who have invested.

We are also interested in collecting data as to how far pubs have changed their opening hours and days. For example, the Ale House, and the Hog do not now open lunchtimes Monday to Thursday, but the Butchers Arms Sheepscombe is now open all day, whereas previously it closed at 3pm and opened again at 6.30. We wonder whether each sub-branch could collect some of the notable changes in opening times and days so we could get a Gloucestershire CAMRA snapshot of pub opening trends and possible explanations.

The Officers – Stroud CAMRA