About Us

Golden Duck Brewery is based on a farm in Appleby Magna in North West Leicestershire. Being ideally locatated about a mile from the M42, we are able to distribute our beers across the Central Midland areas of Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire.

This is a Father and Son operation with son Harry being the Head Brewer. Harry studied at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh for 4 years to obtain his degree in ‘Brewing and Distilling’. At 23 years old Harry had gained valuable work experience with Burton Bridge Brewery, Tower Brewery and the National Brewing Centre in Burton, and Stewart’s Brewery in Edinburgh, before spending the last two summers at Derventio Brewery in Derby and Hopback Brewery in Salisbury. There is some history of brewing in the family too with Andy spending a short time at the Bass Malting’s site in Burton, and father Ray and brother Chris also spending a considerable amount of time working at Bass in Burton. Nephew Eddie still works for the now ‘Coors’ brewery in Burton and was responsible for the installation of our brewery in Appleby Magna. Andy will take on the role of General Manager/Brewery Apprentice. Andy is now retired from Full time employment but mixes his time at the Brewery with Voluntary work at Micro Brew Radio and Part Time Consultancy in Manufacturing Development

The brewery was conceived in early 2012 and plans were accelerated on hearing the unfortunate news of the demise of ‘Rough Draft’ brewery in Leeming Bar in the North East. John from the brewery was although unhappy at the thought of losing his brewery (due to work commitments) was very supportive in helping us to make the necessary arrangements in bringing the brewery ‘lock, stock, and barrell down to the midlands. We obtained the perfect premises at Appleby Magna and found an accommodating landlord in Gerald who puts up with us coming in at odd times of the week to work at the brewery. A loan was procured with the Nat west and we had the green light to move forward.

The first Brew was made on the 27th/28th June 2012. Our aim is to produce hoppy golden beers (with a few exceptions) and we will be looking to produce at least one new beer a month. This will help us to work out the beers that have the most demand. So we can make a yearly schedule of brews with regular seasonal beers. Many of our beers follow a cricket theme as both Andy and Harry are heavily involved in a local cricket club, hence the name Golden Duck Brewery!

Special thanks to;

Jon from Rough Draft Brewery

Paul Wilson from Melbourne printers

Sophie  for the design of our wonderful logo

Dave Starsmore for his brilliant charicature drawing for the beers

Eddie Lunn/ Pete for support in the installation and on going help

Natwest Banking

Gerald from Red Hill Farm Appleby Magna

Robert Bowley from Chartwell Practice Accountants

Andy Stanton, Leeann and Simon from Bluefuse systems for website start up

Andy Sales/Steve Westby from Camra for their help and suppot support.

Hartshorne Cricket Club members for all there help and support

Hugh for helping out on the first brew.

Josh Lakin for sorting our brewery floor out

and finally Paul at the Mushroom Hall in Albert Village who was the first person to sell a pint of beer from Golden Duck Brewery.