| Nethergate Brewery | |||||||||||||
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| Location | Sudbury, Essex England |
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| Owner(s) | Independent | ||||||||||||
| Year opened | 1986 | ||||||||||||
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Nethergate Brewery was established in 1986 in Clare, Suffolk, England by former Head Brewer Ian Hornsey and his business partner Dick Burge. In 2005 the brewery site was moved across the county border to Pentlow in Essex. In 2010 the brewery was sold to annoymous buyers.
The brewery originally concentrated on cask ale and the for a while only brewed the Best Bitter, based on traditional recipes for the Yorkshire bitter style. Over the next four years this beer was joined by two other brews; firstly the Old Growler Porter, and then the IPA (in this case, IPA is also claimed to stand for "Ian's Personal Ale", in honour of the Head Brewer). Nethergate's interest in traditional ingredients also saw the creation of two of their most distinctive beers - Umbel Ale, and the stronger Umbel Magna - through the use of a traditional ingredient which had been ignored by brewers for many years: coriander. Nethergate has since ventured in the bottled beer market, with Old Growler and Umbel ale being especially prevalent in the more specialist off licences and Tesco stores in the south east.