Breweries I love: Old Dairy Brewery

Old Dairy Brewery, Tenterden, Kent, UK.

Old Dairy has been one of my favourite Kent breweries for a long time. They have a solid branding, having started in an old dairy shed and I love the names of their beers. They produce traditional real ale styles and have a craft arm in Cattle Shed which also produced solid offerings.

Being Kent born and bred, one of my favourite times of the year here is Green Hop beer season (more on this in future posts). Old Dairy always produce something interesting as part of the festival, showcasing the herbal, grassy, tea-like and spicy characters of the hops they use. They also tend to use the later hops, meaning you can still get a Green Hopped beer from them towards the end of the season. My particular favourites were the Ernest red ale and a Green Hopped black IPA, please make that one again Old Dairy!!

I'm a massive fan of their darker beers (and the hubs likes the lighter ones). Snow Top, a winter warmer with roasty malt and fruit cake flavours is a seasonal offering. Their barrel-aged version was quite delicious and I snagged one to age, which is living in the back of the beer fridge right now waiting for the perfect moment to crack it open. Dark Side of the Moo is a sweet chocolate milk stout, which also had the barrel-aged treatment at one point making it boozy and rich. Finally, from Cattle Shed, they produce No Bull, a vanilla and cacao nib milk stout and a chocolate milk stout around Easter time which you can grab instead of the traditional eggs.

If you get the chance when we can again, their brewery tour is fantastic. Their small but mighty facility is interesting to view and they are pretty free with their samples - highly recommended! When I take a brewery tour I’m always looking to see what new thing I can learn from it - from Old Dairy I was interested to note that they use dry yeast for their brews and at the time they were labelling all of their bottles by hand!

Check out Old Dairy’s website here for their latest beers and news.

Old Dairy’s numerous awards!