The Ashover story is not over as group rally round to relaunch the business

SHOVER Brewery is back up and running and its popular range of beers is appearing all over the area again.

- COLSTON CRAWFORD

It's quite possible that even some people well acquainted with the Derbyshire beer scene will not have noticed that, for a while, Clay Cross-based Ashover was out of business.

A stock of beers continued to appear on bars for a good while after that happened, so things almost appeared seamless - but they weren't.

Things had seemed good for the brewery, originally founded in 2007 at the Old Poet's Corner pub in Ashover, when entrepreneur David Neale took on the business in 2020.

Brilliant brewer Janine Shorrock, the daughter of Ashover’s founder, Roy, was still in place and they had been settled at the Clay Cross premises since 2015.

The details are not something that I'm going to go into here but it did not work out for the new owner and Ashover went into liquidation around October time last year.

But from those depths has come a bright new beginning which not only sees Ashover up and running again but linked with a successful pub, The Tupton Tap, in Old Tupton, Chesterfield - and it’s always useful for a small brewery to have a guaranteed outlet.

What has happened is that a group of six friends and colleagues got together and decided to invest in the brewery - crucially asking Janine to carry on brewing, along with longtime brewery helper Brian Exford, and adding assistant brewer Jack Burton.