Brewster's Brewing Company

Brewster's Brewing Company was founded by Sara Barton in 1998, continuing a brewing tradition in which women played a central role for thousands of years. The brewery's name comes from 'brewster', an old English term for a female brewer which had largely fallen out of everyday use by the time Sara established the business. Reclaiming the word gave the brewery an identity closely connected with both brewing history and the changing role of women within the modern industry.

Sara entered professional brewing with substantial technical training behind her. She completed a Master's degree in Brewing and Distilling at Heriot-Watt University in 1989 before becoming one of a relatively small number of women working professionally in the brewing industry at the time. That experience eventually led her to establish her own brewery and produce the first Brewster's beers in 1998.

The brewery was originally established in the Vale of Belvoir before moving to Grantham in 2006. Its current home is a 32-hectolitre, or 20-barrel, single-infusion brewhouse at Burnside Industrial Estate, providing considerably greater capacity while retaining relatively small batch sizes that allow Brewster's to produce a broad variety of beer styles.

Cask-conditioned ale remains at the heart of Brewster's production, combining traditional British brewing with a willingness to develop new recipes and styles. Alongside its cask beers, brewery-conditioned beer has become an increasingly important part of production, allowing Brewster's to expand into keg beer and canned small-pack formats while continuing to experiment across its range.

Sara's contribution to brewing has also received wider industry recognition. In 2018 she was named Brewer of the Year by the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group, two decades after founding Brewster's. The award reflected a career that began with formal brewing education in the 1980s and developed into running a brewery whose name deliberately celebrates the historic contribution of female brewers.

Today, Brewster's continues to brew in Grantham with an emphasis on variety, combining established cask-conditioned ales with more innovative and changing releases. Its 32-hectolitre brewhouse provides enough scale for commercial production while retaining the flexibility to brew different styles, continuing the approach Sara Barton began when the first Brewster's beers flowed in 1998.