BAKE & ALEHOUSE

RCH Brewery started in the early 1980's at the Royal Clarence Hotel in North Somerset. Very quickly, in 1984, the Brewery was purchased by the Davey Family. In 1993 Graham Dunbavan was employed as a brewer and new beers were developed by him and Paul Davey.

Production quickly grew from 5bl a fortnight to 15bl a week (we make that a 600% increase - not bad, by anyone's standards). 15bl/week was the capacity of the brewhouse in the hotel and brewing became a problem then because the brewery used all the cold water supply to the hotel in the afternoon and guests could not wash because it was all being used in the paraflow. It was decided that the brewery had to look for other premises (that's just a classic case of prejudice - choosing the ability to wash above that of brewing beer!).

As the desire to wash and keep clean won the debate, new premises were found at a hamlet called West Hewish near Weston Super Mare. The building had been used for making cider and previously as a transport yard. This proved to be a problem as the yard is 18 inches thick with reinforced concrete and it took three weeks to dig a trench for the new drains. Finally, after about three months, they were ready to brew on a new 15bl plant.
This they did quite happily until 1999, when theyfound that they could not keep up with demand and decided to extend the brewhouse and upgrade to a 30bl brew plant.