Sustainability profile: Duration
Beers that belong
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image Simon James
Duration is not a name that was chosen lightly by Miranda Hudson and her partner Derek Bates (known just as ‘Bates’) when they founded their farmhouse brewery in rural Norfolk in 2019. The dilapidated barn in which Duration is housed had already stood on West Acre farm for centuries and is officially a scheduled monument, needing sign off from the Secretary State before works could commence. Working with archeologists, and compliance with seven separate authorities to get building consent for the historic listed site, this was a project to create a business for the long-term that is very much a part of the land and the community it sits within. Bates, originally from South Carolina, sought out a location with a similar pace of life in Norfolk, where agriculture is the dominant industry and the ingredients needed for the brewing process are close at hand. Sustainability was crucial from the beginning, with no mains water or drainage
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Spring 2022 | SIBA Independent Brewer | www.siba.co.uk
in place and a ban on any significant excavation at the site, a huge initial investment had to be made in an innovative water treatment system that purifies effluent sufficiently to be returned to the protected chalk rivers nearby. By-products such as spent grain, yeast and hops are removed first from the effluent and distributed to local farmers and other producers for onward use, and grey water is re-used in the brewhouse for cleaning. As Bates puts it, the whole ethos behind Duration is to ‘leave a legacy, while leaving no trace’, and this is a brewery that not only nurtures, protects and champions the rural environment in which it sits but may well endure beyond this generation to that of the couple’s young daughter. Independent Brewer’s Editor, Caroline Nodder, caught up with Miranda and Bates in mid-January to learn more about this monumental build and the sustainable ethos that underpins it…
