Kent Food & Drink Business of the Year Finalist: Old Dairy Brewery

Old Dairy Brewery is an award-winning, 30-barrel independent brewery nestled in the Garden of England in Tenterden. We brew a range of traditional English beers through to exciting craft beers, as well as seasonal and special beers. Our beers are available in 500ml bottles, cask, cans and keg.

Our brewing story began in 2010 in a converted dairy on a farm (hence our name). Due to increased demand for our beers, we moved to our new larger brewery in 2014, which is now housed in two World War Two Nissen huts in Tenterden. The brewery is also home to our Brewery Shop and Taproom, which are now open seven days a week. We currently supply pubs, restaurants and retail outlets in south-east England and also export to Europe, but we are seeking to grow our export trade into new markets.

Only the finest English malts and hops are used to brew our beers in cask, bottles, keg and can.

We are actively working to improve our sustainability by using locally-grown hops and English malts. Our bottled-beer packaging has now been made more sustainable by using cardboard boxes (we have moved
away from shrink wrap) and are working with the Kent and Medway Growth Hub and Greenwich University
and looking at the possibility of using our spent grain for packaging or maybe even snack bars - this project is at a very early development stage.
We have also started to use a different style of keg container to reduce our plastic usage.
The Artisserie Patisserie in Tenterden uses our spent grain in its bread.
We are an active member of the Tenterden and Ashford Tourist Association and have joint tours with
the Kent and East Sussex Steam Railway, The Wider Experience cycle tours and Tenterden Museum and we
are looking to grow the Experience side of our business so visitors come to Tenterden for a complete experience.
We brew our beer with four ingredients: water, malted barley, hops and yeast in our brewery here in Tenterden. Our beers can be paired with many dishes, such as curries, spicy food, steak or your favourite roast or just relaxing in your garden on a summer evening.
Old Dairy Brewery is now working with the Medway Food Innovation Centre, based at the University of Greenwich, and is home to the Growing Kent and Medway Food Accelerator programme.
The centre is bringing together innovative growers, processors, scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs
to stimulate research, innovation and business growth in the food and drink industry. They are going to be working with us on food loss and waste with our brewer’s spent grain – looking at ways we can potentially use it for food or sustainable packaging. We will also be analysing our beer flavours and sensory characteristics in a very exciting project, with many aspects and dimensions for us to improve our sustainability, which is a very high priority for us.