Cloudwater Brew Co is an independent craft brewery based in Manchester, England. Established in 2014, the brewery began making beer the following year and quickly gained a reputation for the quality of its products. In 2017 and 2018, Cloudwater was ranked among the ten best breweries in the world by beer scoring website

RateBeer Beer rating is assessing and evaluating beer using a point system. The process is similar to that used in beer judging competitions, such as those organised by the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) in America, though the participants are cons ...

, becoming the only UK brewery ever to be featured. Several Cloudwater beers have also received accolades at the same awards. Besides beer, the brewery also produces its own range of non-alcoholic sodas, as well as operating brewery tap rooms in Manchester and London and organising an annual beer festival, Friends & Family & Beer. Cloudwater Brew Co is a member of the Society of Independent Brewers.

History

Cloudwater Brew Co was founded in 2014 by Paul Jones, who had no prior experience in the brewing industry, and James Campbell, formerly the head brewer at fellow Manchester brewery Marble. The pair secured premises in the Piccadilly Trading Estate, which they furnished with a 20 US barrel (roughly 14.3 UK barrels) brewing kit imported from the United States. The size of the operation, relatively large for a new UK brewery, attracted considerable anticipation in the British beer press and on social media. The name "Cloudwater" was chosen as it combined two simple English words in a novel way. It is also a translation of the

Zen Buddhist Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...

term '' unsui'' ("cloud, water"), taken from a Chinese poem about the philosophy of wandering Buddhist monks. The brewery's minimalist logo was inspired by the branding used by wine producers; Jones specifically wanted to avoid the "macho" imagery used by other breweries at the time. The colours used in the logo change seasonally along with the brewery's beer ranges. Brewing commenced on 14 February 2015 and Cloudwater hosted a launch event the following month at the Port Street Beer House in Manchester, a well-known local craft beer venue. The brewery soon gained recognition for the quality of its beers and within two years of opening was named the fifth best brewery in the world by beer scoring website

, becoming the first and (as of 2020) only UK brewery ever to make the top 10. At the 2017 awards (held in 2018), Cloudwater climbed to second place, with only

Hill Farmstead Brewery Hill Farmstead Brewery is a brewery established in 2010 by Shaun Hill in Greensboro Bend, Vermont, United States. It is located in the "Northeast Kingdom" of Vermont, about seventy miles from the state's largest city, Burlington. History Brewery ...

Greensboro, Vermont Greensboro is the southernmost town in Orleans County, Vermont, United States. The population was 811 at the 2020 census. The town includes the places of Campbells Corners, East Greensboro, Gebbie Corner, Greensboro Four Corners, Greensboro B ...

ranking higher. Cloudwater received national newspaper coverage in 2017 after it was reported that one of its beers, ''NW DIPA'', was on sale for £13.40 per pint at The Rake pub in Borough Market, London. At the time, the average cost of a pint of beer in London was £4.20 according to ''

The Good Pub Guide ''The Good Pub Guide'' is a long-running Restaurant rating, critical publication which lists and rates public houses (pubs) in the United Kingdom. He also stated that at 9%

alcohol by volume Alcohol by volume (abbreviated as ABV, abv, or alc/vol) is a standard measure of how much alcohol (ethanol) is contained in a given volume of an alcoholic beverage (expressed as a volume percent). It is defined as the number of millilitres (mL) o ...

the beer was not intended to be served by the pint, and that due to its strength the number of units of alcohol by price was equivalent to weaker, cheaper beers. Head brewer and co-founder James Campbell parted ways with Cloudwater in September 2018 in order to work as a brewing consultant and raise funds to create his own brewery. He later went on to launch nanobrewery Cervezas de Autor. Since Campbell's departure, Cloudwater have continued without a head brewer, which is unusual for a British brewery. In 2019, the brewery organised a not-for-profit festival, Friends & Family & Beer, featuring 59 breweries from around the world. The event was well-attended, attracting more than 1,500 visitors. However, it was closed down by police on the first evening after it transpired that the venue, Upper Campfield Market, did not have a licence permitting the sale of alcohol. Following interventions from the mayor of Manchester,

Andy Burnham Andrew Murray Burnham (born 7 January 1970) is a British politician who has served as Mayor of Greater Manchester since 2017. He served in Gordon Brown's Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2007 to 2008, Culture Secretary from 2008 ...

, and the city's "night-time tsar",

Sacha Lord Sacha John Edward Lord (born 26 January 1972) is a co-creator of the Parklife (festival), Parklife festival and The Warehouse Project. He is also the Night Time Economy Adviser for Greater Manchester, appointed by Mayor Andy Burnham. Early li ...

, the festival was allowed to continue for the rest of the weekend. Friends & Family & Beer returned for its second incarnation in 2020, in a new venue at Manchester Central. It was announced in 2021 that Cloudwater was to begin selling its beers through major UK supermarket chain Tesco. The launch included a four-pack of beers brewed in collaboration with breweries run by people from groups under-represented within the craft beer world: Eko Brewing and Rock Leopard, two of the UK's only Black-owned breweries; Good Karma, specialising in vegan, alcohol-free beers; and Queer Brewing, a brewery established to represent those from the LGBTQ+ community. A second range of beers solely using the Cloudwater name was also introduced. These were to be brewed under contract by Scottish brewery

BrewDog BrewDog is a Multinational corporation, multinational brewery and pub chain based in Ellon, Aberdeenshire, Ellon, Scotland. With production of over 800,000 hectolitres, BrewDog claims to be the "#1 Craft Brewer in Europe". It was founded in 200 ...

using Cloudwater's recipes and yeast. In early 2022, the brewery announced it was ending its agreement with BrewDog prematurely and would eventually stop selling beer through Tesco.

Products

Beers

From its inception the brewery has produced a wide range of beers, from traditional English styles such as mild,

stout Stout is a dark, top-fermented beer with a number of variations, including dry stout, oatmeal stout, milk stout, and imperial stout. The first known use of the word ''stout'' for beer, in a document dated 1677 found in the Egerton Manuscript ...

and India pale ale (IPA), to international varieties such as Helles, grisette and

cream ale Cream ale is a style of American beer which is light in color and well attenuated, meaning drier and with a somewhat higher alcohol content than regular beer. First crafted in the mid-1800s at various breweries in the United States, cream ale r ...

. Unlike most British breweries, Cloudwater opted not to brew a core range of beers, instead creating a seasonally changing selection using hops and malts available at different times of year. The brewery's range of Double IPAs, a heavily hopped and stronger version of the traditional IPA, have received particular acclaim; four beers from the range were named among the Best New Beers of 2017 at the RateBeer awards in Santa Rosa, California. In January 2017, the brewery announced that it was to cease production of cask-conditioned ale. Co-founder Paul Jones cited inadequate profit margins and unacceptable levels of variation in the final product due to differing cellarmanship standards among the reasons for the decision. After an 18-month hiatus, Cloudwater returned to cask brewing in October 2018 with the stipulation that it would only be sold at a small number of venues approved by the brewery. The move was welcomed by the likes of the

Campaign for Real Ale The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) is an independent voluntary consumer organisation headquartered in St Albans, England, which promotes real ale, cider and perry and traditional British pubs and clubs. With just under 155,000 members, it is th ...

and beer writer

Roger Protz Roger is a given name, usually masculine, and a surname. The given name is derived from the Old French personal names ' and '. These names are of Germanic origin, derived from the elements ', ''χrōþi'' ("fame", "renown", "honour") and ', ' ( ...

. Cloudwater was one of the first British breweries to market its beers in 440 ml cans, having previously predominantly used 330 ml glass bottles. This decision led numerous other UK microbreweries to follow suit, and by October 2018 the larger cans accounted for 40% of all packaged craft beer sold nationwide. The designs featured on Cloudwater's cans have also received recognition; in 2019 the brewery was featured in the BEER+ART event at the Tate Modern in London. As of April 2022, Cloudwater Brew Co has released more than one thousand different beers, including collaborations with national and international breweries such as

, Magic Rock, Lervig, Jester King and

To Øl __NOTOC__ To Øl (Danish for "Two Beers") is an international craft brewery based in Denmark. History To Øl was founded by Tore Gynther and Tobias Emil Jensen in 2010 as a gypsy brewer, with brewing primarily taking place at De Proefbrouwerij in ...

. On the popular beer scoring app

Untappd Untappd is a geosocial networking service and mobile phone application founded by Greg Avola and Tim Mather that allows its users to check in as they drink beers, and share these check-ins and their locations with their friends. It incorpora ...

, the brewery's beers have an average rating of 3.96 out of 5, making Cloudwater the 17th-highest rated English brewery.

Cloudwater Soda

In addition to beer, the brewery also produces a range of non-alcoholic beverages. Originally marketed as "Good Call Soda", the brand was debuted in 2019 at the Mindful Drinking festival in London. The name was deliberately chosen to distinguish the drinks from Cloudwater's usual offerings, but also to clarify that the product was not

alcohol-free beer Low-alcohol beer is beer with little or no alcohol content and aims to reproduce the taste of beer while eliminating (or at least reducing) the inebriating effects of standard alcoholic brews. Most low-alcohol beers are lagers, but there are some ...

, despite incorporating ingredients often found in beer such as

hops Hops are the flowers (also called seed cones or strobiles) of the hop plant ''Humulus lupulus'', a member of the Cannabaceae family of flowering plants. They are used primarily as a bittering, flavouring, and stability agent in beer, to whi ...

and fruit. However, the company was accused of copyright infringement by Heineken, who claimed the name was too similar to the "Good Call" slogan associated with its

Foster's Lager Foster's Lager is an internationally-distributed brand of lager. It is owned by the international brewing group Asahi Group Holdings, and is brewed under licence in a number of countries, including its biggest market, the UK, where the Europe ...

brand. The range was subsequently rebranded as simply "Cloudwater Soda".

Locations

Initially, Cloudwater operated two brewery taps: one at the brewery itself on the Piccadilly Trading Estate, and another nearby in a railway arch beneath Manchester Piccadilly station. The latter was known as the Barrel Store and focused on the brewery's more experimental offerings such as

barrel-aged beer A barrel-aged beer is a beer that has been aged for a period of time in a wooden barrel. Typically, these barrels once housed bourbon, whisky, wine, or, to a lesser extent, brandy, sherry, or port.sours. The on-site brewery bar closed in early 2017 to allow for extra production due to increased demand. In July 2018, Cloudwater also closed the Barrel Store and opened Unit 9, a dedicated tap room adjacent to the brewery with 20 draught beer lines. In 2018, Cloudwater announced plans to launch an additional tap room on Enid Street in London. The venue is located on the so-called Bermondsey Beer Mile, a collection of around 15 breweries and bars dedicated to craft beer. Jones cited the Bermondsey scene as one of his inspirations when originally establishing the brewery and explained that his desire to be able to sell the freshest possible beer to drinkers there was a key factor in opening the bar. In July 2021, Cloudwater opened a pub called Sadler's Cat at the site of the former Pilcrow Pub in

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near Victoria station. In January 2022, Cloudwater announced that they would be opening a

beer hall A beer hall () is a large pub that specializes in beer. Germany Beer halls are a traditional part of Bavarian culture, and feature prominently in Oktoberfest. Bosch notes that the beer halls of Oktoberfest, known in German as ''Festzelte'', ...

at Kampus, a new neighbourhood that borders Manchester's gay village. It will take up the ground floor of the former Victorian shipping warehouse Minshull House and feature a kitchen as well as event spaces.

References

{{reflist Breweries in England British companies established in 2014