It all started way back when…

2016

Moss Edge Farm, Cockerham, has been in the Holmes Family for five generations with Steven planning on being the sixth. Steve being the trend-bucking toe rag he is decided it was time for a change. He realised the farm wasn’t sustainable going forward with the huge changes happening in the market. Whilst trying to figure out the direction he could take the farm Steve was also turning his hand at home brewing. Never one to do things by half Steve’s home brewing kit grew and grew until one day it occurred to him that this was in fact his, and the farm’s, future!

2017

With the support from his parents, friends, the Rural Development Programme and the NatWest, Farm Yard Ales was created, they built everything up from the ground by themselves, the steel-framed building and the sloping floors were all carefully designed to house a 2,000 litre brew plant and all the associated equipment with efficiency being at the forefront. In October 2017, when the tanks first started to fill there was only Steven, Darius soon joined the story as head brewer and his experience in the field massively helped Farm Yard Ales find its identity in the market.

2018

As well as expanding the beer range the brewery itself was expanded to accommodate the ever-expanding kit to keep up with demand. Big investments were made into kit and equipment including a top-of-the-line canning machine which ensures the quality of the canned products can be monitored on site to maintain the high standards Steven and Darius set. As well as the brewery itself a taproom was installed to overlook it all. The taproom has seen people from near and far come to try the beer whilst watching it be made below them. The taproom began running some great events including live music, street food, Oktoberfest and more.

2019

Farm Yard’s expansion carried on in 2019 with the introduction of more staff including a new lead brewer to assist Darius, a sales & marketing person, a taproom manager & more bar staff to keep up with the ever growing customer basis. Another 3 tanks were added to the brewhouse taking the capacity up to 20,000 litres which massively helped the brewery keep up with demand. 2019 also saw Farm Yard’s first special ‘Easy Tiger’ was released working with a local artist to design the artwork which soon became a regular occurrence.

2020

Early on in 2020 Darius left Farm Yard to start his own canned wine & cocktail business. Then we all know what happened in March that year. The brewery suddenly had it’s customer base slashed with hospitality closures which included the taproom. Thanks to Farm Yard investing in a canning line earlier on the brewery changed it’s output to 100% small pack and starting delivering straight to people’s homes. Being able to adapt to the new way of life so quickly it was kept the brewery going during 2020. Eventually we upgraded our canning line which at that point had packaged 1.2 million cans.

2021

We started the year in lockdown still pushing out small pack to the public and a few customers. Eventually we saw the taproom open back up outside where we held live music and street food events. We also brought on more office staff and a new lead brewer as well a few more tanks for good measure. The brewery had a bumper years of specials & we hosted our first music festival FYA!

2022

The year started off with a big change. We transitioned from Farm Yard Ales to Farm Yard Brew Co in order to bring the branding & name up to where the beers were in order to give a better representation of the product. In March we installed solar panels across the breadth of the hanger building next door to generate 50% of the brewery’s annual energy usage. We entered into a bunch of awards and won a bunch too! Gulf, Chaff & Hoof all won Great Taste Awards with Gulf going on to be shortlisted in the top 20 food drink products in the UK out of 14,000 entries. The Taproom also won accolade when it was named “Best UK Craft Taproom 2022”. We brought out more beers than ever averaging 2 specials a month whilst maintaining and brew a permanent range that’s now 12(ish) beers strong! Oh and we hosted our FYA festival again and what was bigger and better second time round!

2023

2023 started quick! We brewed hard in December 2022 in order for us to turn off the brew kit for the first half of January. The reason we turned off the brew kit was to expand and go on again, we added 4 40hl tanks to our setup so we could double brew our higher volume beers and pushed our tank space to 400,000L which is a fair bit bigger than Steve’s original home brew kit. We’ll have to wait and see what the rest of 2023 has in store for us, I’ll let you know when I next remember to update the website.