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.

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.

We return to rural Shropshire for a tasty brew from this seriously historic Bishop’s Castle brewery. Brewing here can be traced right back to 1642, when the bumptious but ill-fated King Charles 1st - desperate to fund his civil war - issued a licence for the site. It didn’t help him escape the chop.

But more than 350 years later it is helping slake thirsts at the Fox and the Armoury - where regulars have been known to lose their heads over this lovely straw coloured ale. Brewed with Marris Otter Pale Ale malt and Fuggles hops XXX has a light malt sweetness with a gentle hoppiness and honey finish.

Unlike the tragic Charlie, the brewery is a great survivor. In 1890 owner John Roberts added a ‘state of the art’ red brick Victorian Tower and in 1976 - still tied to the Three Tuns pub business - it was identified by Camra as one of only four remaining brew pubs in the entire country.

However, by 2002 it was in such a state that the owners planned to hive the brewery off from the pub and convert to a house. Brewing moved temporarily to Hobson. Then in 2003, the John Roberts Brewing company came to the rescue to breathe new life into the place. Good job that Charles couldn’t do the same.