First year birthday party at small brewery which supplies north Derbyshire pubs and is going from strength to strength

Huw Trevor, Nathan Longden and Tom Hudson are the brains behind Langwith based Dolomite Brewery.

Housed in an industrial unit which is owned by Nathan’s family, the brewery has the facilities to produce 20 casks of beer a week which amounts to a total of 1,500 pints. Tom, who lives in Walton, Chesterfield said: "I'd be lying if I said we brewed at that capacity every week because we only put into production what is in demand at the time.

"Our four main customers are The Neptune Beer Emporium in Chesterfield, Hasland Hops, The Star Inn at Pilsley and The Pickled Pear at Palterton. We've got a few customers going down to Heanor and Ilkeston.”

The small brewery’s core products are a traditional best bitter named BBF, a hazy pale ale called Showtime and an English pale ale labelled Flutterby. Tom said: "Off the back of those we do specials as well. At the moment it's all cask ales that we're doing. There are aspirations to move to keg beer and sell different variations.

"We got our Showtime in at the Rail Ale festival at Barrow Hill last year. Towards the back end of the year we did the Sheffield Beer Festival and got a couple of beers in there. More recently, we've done the Chesterfield CAMRA Beer Festival at the Winding Wheel. From festivals, we've had the beer go down into London and Leicester.

"In August we are planning to do our beer festival at the brewery where we'll be looking to invite some other local-ish breweries to bring their beers.”

Meanwhile, the guys are looking forward to celebrating Dolomite Brewery’s first birthday at a party in the on-site tap room on March 16 from 2pm. Tom said: "It's largely going to be based around St Patrick's Day celebrations and the Six Nations rugby and will be our third open day.

"We held our first open day last September. That day we sold around 750 pints of beer – we were absolutely run off our feet and it couldn’t have gone any better. That really showed us that we’d got something that could be a success.”

Away from the brewery, all three have day jobs. Huw is head brewer for The Escapist brewery and lives near Portsmouth, Nathan, who lives in Bolsover, is employed in the family plant hire business and Tom works in 3D printing in manufacturing.

Tom said: “Huw is the main cog of our business. He comes up with such good recipes, is fantastic at what he does and really has a handle on the brewing side of things.” Nathan runs the operational side of Dolomite Brewery and Tom is responsible for sales.

"We're still very new to the industry,” said Tom, “but it's an industry that is very friendly and all the feedback we've had online has been really positive.

"It's been a whirlwind year for us. Our philosophy is that if we carry on making really, really good beer and continue dealing with fantastic customers then everything is going to be a success. It's exciting but at the same time it's quite daunting when you read the press around breweries and see some of the big names going bust or just disappearing; we try not to let that negativity be bestowed upon us.”

Commenting on the name of the brewery, Tom said: "A lot of people think it's the Dolomites in Italy because we like skiing. But if you go way back in time, around the Langwith/Creswell area the natural rock formations were dolomite rock and that's what all the water would have been filtered through into natural springs. We thought Dolomite was a nice name given that water is the main ingredient of any good beer."

You can tap into updates on Dolomite Brewery through its Facebook page.