Workington microbrewery work gets underway

Construction work has commenced on an exciting large microbrewery project in Workington, after the local council granted a change of use license for the old farm on the site.

The former agricultural buildings at Calva Farm will be replaced with a state of the art brewery facility. Work is already under way too, with the old floor of the buildings already being pulled up.

With Easter being targeted for the facility to be up and running, new industrial concrete flooring will be installed. This will form the base for a new office on the site, and be the home for the new equipment to be installed.

Graeme Mitchell, who set up Mitchell Krause Brewing four year ago, said:

“We’re cracking on with the work and I’m happy with the way things are progressing.”

He was eager to correct a widely believed suspicion too, saying:

“Everyone assumes that when a microbrewery sets up that it will be an ale brewery but we will be brewing lager.”

Of the lager that is produced, the vast majority will be sold on draught. The remaining 5%percent will be bottled.

The new facility will hopefully see the business take a significant step in its development. Presently, the lager is brewed across two sites in Cheshire and West Sussex. By centralising the process, the bottling and kegging operation which takes place in Cockermouth will be significantly closer.

With distribution and storage managed by a Workington-based company too, overheads should again be significantly reduced.