Worthing brewery welcomes women from far and wide for fantastic International Women's Day brewing event

Kate Hyde, head brewer and production manager at the brewery in Canterbury Road, has been running the event for three years to celebrate women who work with beer and women who live drinking it.

Brewers came from far and wide on Friday, including Birmingham, Oxford and Folkestone, to join local enthusiasts in making a special International Women's Day dark mild from a recipe Kate wrote especially.

She said: "I am a big fan of mild and wrote the recipe based on last year's ruby mild we made. It should be ready in mid-April and a donation will go to Women For Women International."

As well as getting the women involved in the brewing process, the brewery laid on a whole host of activities, including a book club run by Brighton author Jane Peyton, postcard making with Bitter Women Brewery, a talk on recipe development from Alix Blease from Lallemand, tarot reading with Fiona Coffey, a darning workshop with Laura Wyatt, life drawing with Hand Brew Co direct Jen Left, a burlesque workshop with Cherry Shakewell, rap with Phonetic from AudioActive Worthing and an hilarious set from comedian Felix Orlo.

Potter Lucy Young also travelled from Cheltenham with her ceramics, including her specially-designed International Women's Collaboration Brew Day tankard.

She explained that she was following in her father's footsteps, carrying on his tradition of making ceramic tankards for craft beer makers.

Lucy said: "My father was making the tankards in a studio we had when I was little in the Forest of Dean in the 1980s. It was the family pottery and I am carrying it on."

She set up in business as Lucy Young Ceramics last year and still uses the same metal stamps her dad used for 28 years.

Lucy said: "This year, I decided to research about women in the beer industry and that inspired the Collaboration Brew Day tankards. I thought I needed to shout out about it and join forces with other women in beer."

The tankard was designed using speckled clay to give it a rustic feel with an orange nutmeg glaze, with a hop transfer to mix modern and traditional.

Kate said the whole day was a really great opportunity for women who are interested in beer to meet and exchange and build a network.

She added: "There's a lot of waiting around in brewing, so I figured filling the day is important but it also breaks up cliques and allows people to mingle more easily when they are all engaged in activities together."

Hand Brew Co launched at the Hand in Hand pub in Brighton in 2015, with Jen running the pub and Jack Tavare fixing up the tower brewery that had been installed in 1989.

Kate said: "The pub was a Brighton institution, selling its own beers and championing the now super popular pub game of Toad.

"The Hand in Hand is an incredible community corner boozer and it forms the bedrock of our outlook as a brewery. It’s what we think pubs should be. A safe, comfortable, happy place where everybody’s welcome. A place that proudly absorbs the community’s personality and shares the space for interesting, unusual and rare events."

By 2019, Hand Brew Co was outgrowing its wonderful but tiny brewery in the roof of the pub and it was time to find a larger production facility. In 2020, they got the keys to the new brewing home in Worthing, capable of brewing batches of 5,000 pints at a time.

Kate said: "Here, we run on steam, for efficient brew days and ultra sterile cleaning. We filter our hard Sussex water through a reverse osmosis filter prior to brewing to soften it and create a blank slate allowing us to build the correct profile to replicate any beer we like.

"We power our energy through solar and produce about half a million pints of beer a year, and generate about five tonnes of spent grain a week that goes to feed local cattle. Our team has grown and alongside it our list of awards for great beer."

In 2022, Hand Brew Co was given the opportunity to take over the Castle Ale House near Morrisons, and the team jumped at the chance to open a venue in Worthing.

Kate said: "We wanted to create a venue that shared the same ethos as the Hand in Hand but could be its own place. A place we could treat as a local tap room for the brewery and all its delights and where the community could put their stamp on it. And they did. We called it The Toad in the Hole."