Grantham beer on-board Royal Navy warship HMS Queen Elizabeth
An award-winning Grantham brewery has just delivered a major shipment of its first ever bottled beer to the Royal Navy’s largest ever warship.
Newby Wyke, based off Alma Park Road, sent down more than 2,000 bottles of its six per cent HMS Queen Elizabeth golden ale to the £3 billion flagship Royal Navy vessel of the same name.
The brew, first created in 2012 to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, will now be drunk by senior staff on the vessel.
The move also means almost 1,500 bottles will also be sold locally ‘in good bottle shops and good pubs’ in addition to the cask version currently available in pubs.
The story began in 2014 when an ex-Naval serviceman took a photo of one of the HMS Queen Elizabeth beer glasses in the Nobody Inn in North Street, Grantham. They then sent it to the director of ships, whose company BAE was building the HMS Queen Elizabeth.
Christine March, wife of brewer Rob, explained: “They asked us if we could do a brew for the naming of the ship, but we did not have enough time.”
Instead, Newby Wyke sent a picture of the pump clip, which was presented to the new vessel. In turn, the brewery received the ship’s coat of arms.
Nothing was heard from the ship again, but then unexpectedly in June this year, more than five years later, the couple received an email asking them to provide bottles for the Ward Room.
Newby Wyke has never produced bottled beer before in its 21-year history, believing its beer should be drunk in pubs rather than at home to help keep pubs open. In addition, the added costs of bottling do not always make such beers cost-effective to make.
The brewery has spent an extra £3,000 in bottling and labelling as part of the deal, which the couple say was “too good to refuse”.
When the beer was brewed, using a combination of the finest hops he won’t reveal, Rob had some concerns about how his first bottles would turn out.
He said: “When I opened a bottle, I was amazed. The aroma of grapefruit hits you.”
Neville Lomas, former chairman of Grantham’s Camra branch and current organiser of its beer festival, added: “It is a different product to Rob’s real ales, but once again he has excelled with yet another lovely beer.”
Delivering the beer in time for the Queen Elizabeth leaving Portsmouth meant Rob and Christine had to pull out all the stops and work many extra long days.
The beer was brewed in July and then bottled in Birmingham, arriving back in Grantham nearly three weeks ago.
Then, a few days later, Rob and Christine’s son, Darren Hudson of Colsterworth trucking company Hudson and White, delivered the beers to Portsmouth and they then had a guided 90-minute tour of the ship.
As a supplier to the HMS Queen Elizabeth, Newby Wyke is now classed as “a friend of the ship,” which means any employee of Newby Wyke can go on board.
Rob said: “This was a great honour and I am a great supporter of the armed forces who do a brilliant job protecting us. My dad was also in the army and I grew up at army bases in England, Germany and Malaysia.”
Rob’s family also has a long seafaring background, which adds to the pride he and Christine feel in supplying the Royal Navy.
Both Rob’s grandfather and great-grandfather were trawlermen, with the company named after a 178ft seafaring trawler on which is grandfather worked.
The HMS Queen Elizabeth delivery adds to a significant year for the brewery which first began in Rob’s garage in Grantham in 1998 and then moved to Little Bytham in 2001 and then back to Grantham in 2009.
But how do the officers on board the HMS Queen Elizabeth, now crossing the Atlantic to the USA, feel about their namesake ale?
The ship’s Commander Charles Guy emailed Newby Wyke this week and said: “You will be pleased to know your beer is an outstanding success and the officers are thoroughly enjoying it – but not too much to cross the Commander at sea!”
A Royal Navy spokesman confirmed that the ship had ordered beer from Newby Wyke, adding: “It’s not the Royal Navy sponsoring beer. We have messes on board. We can choose what beers we want to have on board.
“The ship decided to support an independent British brewer.”