Just a little further up the road was our next stop. Just opposite where the boat was moored lies the futuristic Carlsberg Brewery and it seems a strange place to build a brewery, but all would be revealed by the end of the day.
The Albion Brewery Bar is the brewery tap for an new (but old) brewery. The building started out as a new brewery in 1884 to replace an old one not far away. It was for the Ratcliffe and Jeffery Brewery. In 1899 they were bought by another local brewer Phipps. By 1912 brewing moved elsewhere and the place became a lemonade factory, and then a warehouse for a grocery chain. By 1953 it had become a tannery and eventually was the maker of the covers for filofax. By 2011 the filofax was old hat and the factory closed. In 2014 Phipps moved in and installed a new brewery. A year latter the Albion Bar opened as the brewery tap which looks into the brewery itself. The large building has also rented out spaces for artists, film studios, printing and photography workshops etc. There are plans to develop the area in front of the building as a new square that will show the link to the old Saxon wooden palisade that has been discovered by an archaeological dig. It is a great place to visit and very handy for a brewery tour too.
The history of Phipps Northampton Brewery Company is complicated. The company actually started in Towcester in 1801. They expanded and opened a second brewery in Northampton in 1817. Eventualy, after the severe fire at Towcester that brewery was claose and all production moved to their Bridge Street Brewery, where the Carlsberg plant is now. By the end of the 1890's they had bought Ratcliffe's Brewery and several other local brewers to become the largest in the Midlands. In 1957 they merged with Northampton Brewery Co and had 1131 tied pubs. Then disaster, as Watney Mann bought them and by 1968 no real was been brewed and keg beer became king! In the 1970's the new company collaborated with Carlsberg to build a new brewery on the site of the Phipp's Bridge Street Brewery. The reason there is a concentyration of breweries in the area is the access to a perfect water source from the Kingswell. The pub chain remained seperate and through several name changes etc and when they were part of the Scottish and Newcastle stable and opportunity came for the local managers to take over the dormant name and recipes, and by 2014 they were brewing the old recipes again, all be it at the Grainstore Brewery in Oakham. Another now local brewery Hoggley's, first started in 2002, merged with Phipps at the end of 2013. By 2014 the old Ratcliffe and Jeffery/Phipps Kingswell Brewery had been purchased and a new 15 bbl plant had been installed and Hoggley's and Phipps NBC and Ratcliffes beers are brewed
I chose a pint of Ratcliffe's Celebrated Stout, 4.3%. This resurrected recipe from the Ratcliffe's Brewery that Phipps took over in 1899 pours with a very nice thick and creamy tan head. The colour contrasts very well with the nice dark beer. The roasted and crystal malts are balance with hops so that it is neither to bitter or too fruity, although a sort of caramel after taste is there. It was a nice beer to drink several pints of, rather than a strong earthy stout where one seems to fill you up. Apparently the brewery sent a consignment out to the Northamptonshire regiment who made up part of the Desert Rats. It went down so well that they continued their supply as they fought through North Africa and up the Italian countryside to the end of the war. The beer and the brewery pub are well worth a visit.
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