The Magpie Brewery is a new enterprise starting up in the centre of a once great brewing city. The brewery is situated at Unit 4 Ashling Court off Iremonger Road in Nottingham.

We are within a few meters of the perimeter wall around the Notts County ground, hence the name of the brewery! However, all football fans, indeed all beer fans, are very welcome to visit this website and indeed sample our beers.

We will try to keep you informed about where you can sample a pint (or two).

The business end

The brewery is owned and run by three friends, Bob Douglas, Ken Morrison and Nick Sewter. We are all retired from our "day jobs", Nick was a teacher in his previous existence, Ken and Bob both worked for industrial relations troubleshooters, Acas.

The news archive page has a reprint of an article from the Nottingham Evening Post when Bob left Acas.

One for sorrow, two for joy;
Three for a girl, four for a boy;
Five for silver, six for gold;
Seven for a secret, never to be told;
Eight for a wish, nine for a kiss;
Ten for a bird that's best to miss.

Magpie Reaches New Heights

Bob and Ann have been attempting to climb (ie walk up, they don't do proper climbing!) all the Lake District summits of 2000 feet or more mentioned in the Wainwright guides over the past few years. The picture shows Bob raising a glass of JPA on the summit of Pillar, the last of the 127 to be completed. Bob commented that, while it might seem a bit sad to collect peaks in this way, it has encouraged them to walk in many of the lesser known areas of the Lakes, seeing some stunning scenery and very few fellow walkers in the process.

More New Beers

Since the last update, we have launched a couple of new beers. Thieving rascal is a less strong version of thieving rogue and will only be available through the summer while Magpie Best is likely to replace Trent Bridge Special as our "traditional" bitter. Bob, on being asked its colour by a potential customer replied that it is "beer coloured". After being subjected to this advanced sales pitch, the customer went ahead and ordered some - smooth marketing speak obviously pays off.

We have two more beers in the pipeline. The first, Monty's Firkin is named in honour of Monty, the pub dog at the Queen Adelaide, and is one of a series of "Monty" beers - others have been brewed by Full Mash and Nutbrook. The second, is our locally hopped beer, (see updated photo) which will be called Hedgehopper, following a competition in the Nottingham Drinker. This will be launched at the Robin Hood Beer Festival at its new venue - we hope to see you there, we'll be around on the Thursday and Friday, so do come over and have a chat.

Bottles

Don't forget that that these are now available in a few local off licenses. We are operating at close to capacity with our high tech equipment (it makes Heath Robinson look state of the art) so will only extend our range if other local shops approach us. We certainly aren't aiming at the shelves of any supermarkets!

Locale

This campaign which was started by Nottingham CAMRA is now going nationwide. Congratulations to Steve Westby for getting it going and also (belatedly) for his recognition as Campaigner of the Year by CAMRA. We do travel a fair way to deliver beer, but we started out as "Local Beer - Local People" and we believe that is the way to go. It's fair to say that when we do travel, we fill the van as full as possible, and our customers do tend to keep excellent pubs.