Sharing a Brew
There's many a story to be told at the end of a Westcountry farm lane. Fergus Byrne has been hearing from Vic Irvine at Cerne Abbas Brewery
© Vic Irvine and Jodie Moore at Cerne Abbas Brewery Photograph Robin Mills
O
n the day I meet Vic Irvine at Cerne Abbas Brewery he receives a worn copy of an old school report in the post. It details the end of year marks from when he was ten years old. Inside the envelope, there's also an earlier photograph of him as a child with one of his best friends sitting in a high chair behind him. Although the A's in his report outnumber the B's by a long way, and there are effusive comments from his headteacher about his abilities, there is no mention of the fact that one day he might run a successful brewery. But that’s no surprise. Unless you are educated by beer-making monks it’s unlikely that any educational establishment would be able to predict that particular career path. Today, sitting in the taproom just outside Cerne Abbas at the brewery he runs with business partner Jodie Moore, he admits with a chuckle that he probably had more interest in 40 The Marshwood Vale Magazine December 2021 Tel. 01308 423031
being a racing driver in those days. In an average week, the Cerne Abbas Brewery in Barton Meadows Farm produces up to 3,000 pints of traditional real ale. About a third goes to bottles and the rest comes fresh from hand pumps in pubs around the area. Talking about his beer it’s clear that Vic’s passion for producing a unique ‘traditional’ ale means there is no room for getting over creative or too fancy. Today there might be a certain popularity in what is termed ‘craft’ beers but that’s a word that elicits a derisive snort from Vic. He describes it as an umbrella term for smaller breweries. ‘A lot of it is keg driven’ he says, ‘which is stuff that is force-fed with CO2 so it can last longer.’ He describes many of them as ‘hop forward’ where he points out that the hop is the main characteristic of them. ‘They are cloudy beers, stronger beers—American west coast IPA style. We’re more of a
