The brewery
A brewery with a taproom in it is six businesses in a chapel: the bar, the beer, the tour, the room, the shop and the van. Each has a page with what it costs and how it works, and none of them has a price we would not say to your face.
01
The chapel floor with long tables made from the pews, the bar of reclaimed timber with eight numbered taps, a gallery upstairs you can book, a yard with picnic benches and the pizza oven, and the brewhouse behind a glass wall. Open Thursday to Sunday; a different food van every Friday; children until 8pm; dogs always.
A pint from £4.
02
Four beers all year (Twyn Pale, Graig Lager, Berw Stout and Pwll Bitter), a seasonal most fortnights from a hazy IPA to a sour with Rhondda rhubarb, a 7.8% imperial stout at Christmas, and a 2.8% table beer for the people driving. Brewed on a ten-barrel kit behind the glass wall, from Welsh malt where we can get it and water from the hill. The board page says what is on today.
Pints from £4.
03
The Saturday tour at two: ninety minutes around the brewhouse with whoever brewed that week, malt in your hand, a hop to crush, a taste from a tank, then a flight of four on the chapel floor and a can to take home. £25, twelve people at most, booked on the booking page. Private tours for up to ten on any day, £180, with a tasting that matches your taste.
The Saturday tour £25 a head, including a flight of four thirds and a can.
04
The Tuesday quiz (£2 a head to the Pontypridd food bank, teams of six), a different food van every Friday, pizza on Saturdays, a band about once a month, a running club from the yard on Wednesdays, and a Christmas party with the pulpit as a DJ booth. The gallery seats thirty for £150 against the bar; the whole chapel takes a hundred and twenty for weddings and parties on a Monday to Wednesday.
Quiz £2 a head to the food bank.
05
The shop by the door sells every beer we have in cans at the taproom price: £3.80 a can, a mixed twelve for £36, twenty-four for £66, and a gift pack of four cans and a branded glass for £22. Order on the booking page for collection on Wednesday or any taproom day, or delivery on our van in CF37 and CF38 on Thursdays for £3, free over £40.
A can £3.
06
Kegs, casks and cans to forty-six pubs, bars, shops, restaurants and events across RCT, Merthyr, Caerphilly, Bridgend and Cardiff: a 30-litre keg of the core range £98, a nine-gallon cask £72, a case of twenty-four cans £42, all plus VAT, ordered by Wednesday noon and delivered Thursday or Friday on our own van. Two kegs or casks and the delivery is free; the price list is on this page, not behind a login.
Core-range keg (30 litres) £98, seasonal keg £108, nine-gallon cask £72, a case of twenty-four cans £42, all plus VAT.
How the beer is made
Sixteen hundred litres a brew, two brews a week, four fermenters and two brite tanks. Small enough that a batch is a decision, big enough to keep forty-six pubs supplied.
The base malt comes from a maltings in Gwent, the speciality malts from Bamberg and Norfolk, the hops from Kent, Slovenia and the Yakima Valley, and the water from a spring on the Graig that we had tested and could not believe.
The house strain has been repitched every week since the first brew. It is why the pale tastes like our pale. The lager has its own, and the sours use a culture that lives in a separate fridge with a lock.
A small canning line in the vestry fills about two thousand cans a week, on a Tuesday. No contract canning, no shipping tanks across the country, and a can that is at most a week old when it reaches the shop fridge.
Ninety minutes round the tanks with whoever brewed that week, malt and hops in your hands, a taste from a fermenter, then four thirds on the chapel floor. £25, twelve at most. The same form takes a mixed box, the gallery, or a trade order.
