Lunchtime Meeting - 12.45pm - Speaker Shane Parr, Director and Owner of Stonehouse Brewery

Stonehouse Brewery's Shane Parr was Oswestry Rotary Club's guest speaker at a recent meeting (Monday 17th August) when he spoke to a large and enthusiastic gathering of members of how his love of cask ales had drawn him, together with his wife Alison, into setting up their own brewery at their Weston site around 8 years ago. “Then there were 400 breweries in the UK and now there are about 1,200" said Shane, “and we’ve seen a 25 to 30 per cent increase in beer sales, particularly in real ale".

With the Progressive Beer Duty levied on breweries, Shane is keen to keep Stonehouse a micro-brewery and reduce the amount of duty payable.  So, rather than increasing ale production, Shane said that he and his team are focusing on looking after their local customers and diversifying into other areas.

In 2013, with a popular, award-winning range of real ales to their name, Stonehouse opened a Brewery Visitor Centre which has seen its visitor numbers take off as tours, tastings and bar custom draw people in.

Although some way off, Shane is looking forward to exciting plans announced recently by the Cambrian Heritage Railways to run steam trains from Oswestry Station to their Goods Shed Visitor Centre, adjacent to Stonehouse, which could bring even more visitors.

The Stonehouse range was expanded in 2014 by the production and release of their own well-received small batch of Sweeney Mountain Cider, named after the estate where Stonehouse stands and the apples were grown.  Encouraged by this success, Shane has undertaken the planting of a 100-tree orchard on the Weston site which should, in a few years' time, yield enough apples to produce their own cider, provide a camping area for the young Parr family and present an attractive view from the outside tables of the Visitor Centre.

Many thanks to Shane for sharing his interesting thoughts and ideas about the history and future of Stonehouse - a successful local business and a popular talk.