Box Steam Brewery

Box Steam Brewery produce a fine selection of real ales in my home county of Wiltshire, last Autumn they moved from their location in Colerne to a larger site in Holt, I was lucky enough to visit them and see how some of my favourite local beers are made.

Box Steam aim for a quality product, their beers are clear cut and clean and demonstrate what can be achieved in making traditional British real ales. Their range has what you would expect for a producer of real ales, from bitters and best bitters to golden beers and dark porter style beers.

The Box Steam Brewery Brand

Box Steam Brewery branding is well defined, the theme of the railway, Victorian engineering and the achievements of Brunel are shown throughout. The styling of the bottle labels is to look like parchment with engineering sketches and each of the beers has a suitably railway inspired name. This I feel really brings the branding together and appeals to those who have a love of the railway, engineering and I hope appeals to those who like a good British beer.

The theme of railways comes from the breweries association with the railways via it’s original site overlooking Box. At Box is the entrance to the famous Box Tunnel as created by Brunel in the 1830s, this is depicted in much of the iconography of Box Steam Brewery and even gives it’s name to one of their beers – Tunnel Vision.

But Box Steam Brewery shines beyond just the look, the beer is superb. I often meet those who are looking for a good brown beer, not too hoppy or over the top in strength. Box delivers this with their range all being on the sessionable side in ABV (3.8-4.5%) and packing some real flavours.

I was met by Kevin Newbould, key accounts director at Box Steam Brewery. He showed me round the brewery and then we sat down to talk beer. He felt that the branding of Box Steam had been a great success, it is “aimed at the top end of the market” and then “backed up by quality and consistency”. The individual beers are aimed to become well known and then as a whole the brand holds together. The first time a beer is sold is often on the strength of the brand, that people come back to a beer is a measure of the beer’s quality.

I asked what the challenges to brewing currently are, Kevin gave the same impression that I have been getting from all brewers recently. Although the market is strong in terms of more people enjoying beer and importantly enjoying high quality beers, the challenges of high levels of duty both on brewers and at the pump are making a very difficult environment. Brewers are looking for ways to differentiate themselves and at the same time reduce their production costs. Box Steam Brewery made the move to the larger brewery partly to try and reduce the overheads as well as fulfil demand.

As for future developments for Box Steam Brewery, they have a visitors centre and shop and hope to be able to expand in this area by putting on functions or catering for group tours. Kevin has recently returned from a visit to America where a few beers are already going down very well – “Funnel Blower went down well in America, it has the WOW factor”. Another possibility is the move to larger 750ml “sharing” bottled beer aimed at those who like to enjoy a beer with company over a meal. The site is set up for an increase in capacity with space for a further two fermenting vessels showing that Box Steam Brewery have big plans.