Handmade in Devizes says the badge on the pump. Well they must be very busy little hands; this Wiltshire brewer produces around 200,000 barrels a year – and most of it, apparently, is the impressive 6X brew.

‘Waddies’ Victorian tower brewery is the very epitome of English ale brewing. Originally founded in 1875 by Henry Wadworth, the present brewery was built ten years later and has stayed in family hands. It even boasts one of the country’s very few remaining coopers to work on the traditional wooden casks.

Yes indeed, this is brewing heritage in a glass. And it’s pretty blinking good beer too. Brewed with pale and crystal malts together with cane sugar and no less than four varieties of English hops: First Gold, Fuggles, Goldings and Progress, 6X is a copper coloured  ale with a complex flavours of soft malts and hop bitterness.

Wadworth owns more than 250 pubs and is one of the few brewers that still retains dray horses for deliveries. Fortunately, to the relief of the discerning imbibers at Pen-y-Bryn, these days the beasts don’t have to struggle the 200 plus miles with their regular tipple.

Twelve beer enthusiasts from around the company worked with Tony Allen of Phoenix Brewery developing our own cask ale over a period of seven months. This version - brew No. 8 - was the one we were finally happy to put our name to. It was an arduous process, but we were prepared to make the personal sacrifice for the good of the cause.

Brewed using East Kent Golding hops with a touch of American Mount Hood hops for aroma, this has been fermented using a Timothy Taylor derived yeast. Tony used predominantly Maris Otter malts with a small amount of Crystal to give colour and body, and the water is sourced from Ullswater as it is particularly pure and soft.

This beer has a gentle and pleasant aroma with a fine dark gold/amber colour and a good creamy head that clings down the glass. Taste wise, this has a malty, fruity sweetness and a long, rounded but refreshingly dry finish.

There’s a lot of gold about in brewing these days. Liquid gold that is. Indeed, brewers have been doing a lot of prospecting in this particular field of cask ale in recent years. And it’s tapped into a rich seam of the market with drinkers. Witness the Klondike-like rush to the bar in Harkers on a Friday evening.

But this one from Salopian made an early strike back in 1998. And it’s rather a shiny nugget; the SIBA (Society of Independent Brewers) West Champion Bitter in both 2003 and 2004 it also claimed the Supreme Champion title in 2003.

Wilf Nelson and his team in Shrewsbury first panned into brewing with specialist continental style beers back in 1995, but then decided to dig in the traditional ale market. With Shropshire Gold they struck it big and brewery capacity has expanded twice already. Today it weighs in to provide half of total output.

A rich gold colour it looks distinctive. And triple hopped with both British and Slovenia Goldings combined with complex malts it delivers wonderfully distinctive fruit aromas and flavours. The very full-bodied taste actually gives the impression of punching above the weight of its moderate abv. Keep digging Wilf.

The brewery opened in 1980 next to the Plough Inn at Wistanstow in Shropshire, which is still the brewery’s only tied pub. Steady growth over the years included the acquisition of the Sam Powell brewery and its beers in 1991. Shropshire Lad is a strong well-balanced beer with malt and hop characters, whose complex flavours comes from a blend of selected English barley and traditional English Fuggles and Golding hops. It started life as a seasonal Spring ale in 1995 inspired by the collections of poems by A.E.Housman, but rapidly became Wood’s best seller. Well, we read the poems, and we drank the beer, and we did both simultaneously, but we couldn't put the two together - until Richard W. Jones from Welshpool very kindly sent us this link. Anyway, it has a permanent listing at the Armoury in Shrewsbury and the Fox at Chetwynd Aston, and is delicious.