Curious Brewery and Visitor Centre

Curious brewery and visitor centre, a custom-built brewery in Ashford, UK, was opened in May 2019.

The brewery is owned by Chapel Down and developed by U + I Group to develop the former’s Curious brew products. It features a modern restaurant and bar, as well as a visitor centre.

Curious brewery was developed with an investment of £3.6m ($4.1m approximately). It can produce 21,293l of beer a year and will keg and bottle beer at a rate of approximately 4,000 bottles an hour.

The brewery also offers guided tours of the production house and tasting of the produced beer straight from the tank. It is expected to attract approximately 50,000 visitors a year.

Curious brewery and visitor centre location

Curious brewery and visitor centre is located on Victoria Road in Ashford, Kent. It is situated on a 0.65ha former wasteland purchased with the support of Ashford Borough Council in November 2017.

The brewery’s proximity to Ashford International Station provides connectivity to Kings Cross and the centre of Paris, as well as London and the wider south-east. It is also well connected with English Channel ports and the Kent countryside.

Curious brewery and visitor centre details

The Curious brewery building consists of two floors with the exterior featuring a perforated corten steel wall enclosing the boundary of the building. The ground floor features a production area, a 1,000ft² shop, bar and hosting area for visitor tours.

The first floor includes a 100-cover restaurant overlooking the brewery floor, a 4,000ft² bar, and two dining rooms with an open kitchen featuring landscaped gardens and a waterfall feature.

The brewery includes a custom-built five-vessel brewhouse and a luxury private dining room to host special masterclasses for the visitors. Visitors can also enjoy Chapel Down’s wines, spirits and cocktails apart from Curious’ beers.

Curious brewery equipment details

Curious Brewery is installed with six units of uni-tanks with a capacity of 20,000l each. The tanks can produce 5,200l of beer, which are fermented for approximately 40 days. Each brew at the brewery produces approximately 1,420l of beer.

The silos installed at the brewery have a capacity to hold 30t of Malted Kent Barley, which can produce roughly 40,220l of Curious beer.

The brewery incorporated a de-aeration set (or DAL plant), along with a water treatment plant, which was imported from Lubron. It is also installed with two water tanks with a capacity of 25,000l each.

The waste from the brewery, including spent grain and trub, is supplied to local farms to be used as cattle feed.

Financing

Chapel Down started a crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs crowd-funding platform in October 2015 for developing the brewery.

With a target of £1m ($1.13m), the company raised £1,749,100 ($1.99m) by November 2015. The campaign also provided shareholder benefits to 895 investors by offering comprehensive packages.

An additional £5.5m ($6.26m) was raised through share placement, which included £2.75m ($3.13m) from the directors of Curious Drinks and Chapel Down.

Curious Brewing’ products

Curious Brewing’s product portfolio includes Curious Brew, Curious Session IPA, Curious Apple, and Curious Porter.

Curious Brew is fermented with Champagne yeast, while Curious Apple is brewed from apples from England and Curious Porter is an English Porter matured with winemakers’ oak.

Curious Brewing’s newly launched Curiouser & Curiouser is a unique series of small batch beer, wild fermented using sour ale matured in barrels with Bacchus and Chardonnay wine yeast.

Contractors involved

Guy Hollaway Architects was contracted for architectural services while Jenner undertook the construction works.

TLC Industrial Roofing and Cladding Specialists were contracted for roofing and cladding works.

Start Platforms supplied articulated boom lifts and scissor lifts for construction, while Flyby Photography filmed the progress at the site.