Jim Southey started brewing in 2013 having been inspired by friends, other brewers and completing a 4 day brewing course.
“I think I was brought up to love beer having started drinking in a village pub with good local real ales and then living in Bristol and Bath where there was always a great selection on tap”
LoveBeer was established in 2014 after an initial foray into supplying firkins to a few local beer festivals. Two of our early brews featured and won awards in the CAMRA Oxford beer festival.
“When you see young and old people tasting and enjoying a pint of your own ale you get motivated to do more. At the Oxford CAMRA festival in 2014 I remember talking to some Chinese students who said how much they loved drinking English beers”.
If you love beer you’ll probably also enjoy making it and just like being a great chef it takes some inspiration and passion to create and maintain a great brew.
I love beer and so the name of LoveBeer seemed an obvious one to go with.
We brew mainly cask ales for the pub trade with a 6 BBL plant with capacity for 2,000 litres per week and have a growing number of outlets, festivals and private buyers for our ales. Our local community of beer lovers has been very supportive in many ways and passers-by are always welcome to call in on a Brew Day to chat and inhale the wonderful aromas of malt and hops. If only we could bottle that “brewery perfume”
Our team includes Sara who is a Mild Rover fan and top marketing guru. Jenny is our family artist and designed the LoveBeer logo and has drawn up most of the other beer designs. Ben is already a proven apprentice brewer and a decent amateur photographer (as shown in the gallery)
Pete started with us in 2021 looking for a change of career and is a natural at the brewing game, his favourite beer Skyfall is named after his springer, Colin.
We only use traditional ingredients of water, malted barley or oats, whole hops and brewers yeast. There are occasional special beers made using extra ingredients to add flavour such as molasses, ginger or black treacle!
Our ales are on tap at some superb local food and real ale pubs including;
The Plum Pudding in Milton
The Brewery Tap in Abingdon
The Fleur de Lys in Hagbourne
The Eyston Arms in Hendred
The Jolly Farmers in Oxford
There Mulberry in Didcot
The Bull in Great Milton
