Tiny Local Brewery Wins Salisbury Beer Festival Award For Second Time Running

A tiny brewery run from a converted garage on the edge of the New Forest has beaten off competitors from all over Britain to be voted the Beer of the Festival for the second year running at Salisbury’s summer beer and cider festival.

Attendees at Summerfest, which is run by the Salisbury & South Wiltshire branch of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), voted for Sunny Haze, from the Dead Duck brewery in Hale, near Downton, as the best of two dozen beers available at the festival in Salisbury Guildhall.

Sunny Haze, a 4.5% ABV IPA, gets its name partly because its colour resembles the dappled sunshine of New Forest sunsets, and also from Sunny, the friendly cockapoo dog owned by brewer Paul Bartlett and his wife Louise.

Quite reasonably, Sunny insisted that she be in the photograph when a group of CAMRA members went to Hale to present Paul with his Beer of the Festival certificate.

A year ago, Dead Duck, a one-man operation run by Paul, won the Beer of the Festival award at Summerfest 2024 with Knightwood Oak, a 5% ABV chocolate porter, named after the largest, and probably the oldest, tree in the New Forest.

“I am honoured and surprised, in fact chuffed, to have won this award two years in a row,” said Paul.

Andrew Hesketh, Salisbury & South Wiltshire CAMRA’s festivals co-ordinator, who presented Paul with his certificate, said: “South Wiltshire and surrounding areas are lucky to have a number of excellent, small breweries, and Paul is a fast-emerging talent among them. Local beer lovers have a fantastic choice of real ales.”

Paul, who teaches creative arts at the New Forest Academy in Hythe, began brewing 11 years ago when he lived in a London flat and was given a home brew kit as a Christmas present. He was determined to make each successive brew better until it became, as his wife Louise put it, “a hobby that got out of control”.

When they moved to Hale to be nearer their respective families, the garage seemed the perfect building to convert into a small brewery. “I thought that the brewery would never succeed so I gave it the name ‘Dead Duck’ as a joke,” said Paul.

“I am being proved wrong.” He now brews a total of four beers with a fifth – a pale ale - at the testing stage, and these are available at a number of pubs in the area, including The Horse and Groom in Woodgreen, the Radnor Arms at Nunton and the Royal Oak at Fritham.

“What has changed in the past year is that we are reaching out to different pubs,” said Paul. “We have also bought a gazebo and had our first outings. Selling to pubs and shops is great but you don’t meet the punters. We have been to the Downton Cuckoo Fair, Frogham Fair and the New Forest Beer Festival.” “I am still teaching full-time. I could eventually go down from teaching five days a week to four but not yet. We have got to pay the mortgage. But brewing is now a hobby that pays for itself, which is a nice place to be.”

Second place in the Beer of the Festival voting went to Barlow Sesh, a session IPA from Collyfobble Brewery, Barlow, Derbyshire, while another local brewery, Stonehenge Ales from Netheravon, came third with 40 Summers, a traditionally brewed golden-coloured ale.