Postcards from the Isle of Man: Kerroo Brewing

Kerroo finally have a taproom and they're making beer in it!

Kerroo Brewing, run by Nick Scarffe and Elizabeth Townsend, has been a brewery on the Isle of Man for more than two years now, but it’s only just got its own space. Despite there being quite a few unused workshops and warehouses on the island, it’s not easy to get permission to revitalise them.

“We started off looking at the former Manx Kippers place in Peel,” says Elizabeth, “but it wasn’t fit for purpose at all and the changes we’d have to make would have been out of our budget.”

Fortuitously for the beautiful seaside town of Port Erin, Kerroo finally found a home at the former Commissioner’s Depot on Droghadfayle Road—just around the corner from the steam train station. What used to be a garage storage facility and even a bin lorry garage is now adorned with the Kerroo Brewing sigil and furnished with a lovely concrete bar.

“We hate the floor but we’re going to be sorting it soon,” says Nick, to which I point out that I quite like the remnants of parking area paint. “It’s lucky though, we’re on a natural slope, so we just installed a big drain and away we went.” I had never thought about how crucial floor types were to a functional brewery.

Inside the brewery is Kerroo’s kit, a 1000bbl stainless steel beauty from Leicester with two 16hl conical fermenters bought from Attic Brewery in Birmingham, all shipped over the Irish Sea way before the brewery even had a premises.

“We just knew they were the right pieces,” says Elizabeth. “We had faith it was going to happen!”

While they waited, and waited, and waited, Elizabeth networked her arse off. Becoming a member of the Women In Beer group, she met with other women from the beer industry across the UK, and travelled all over Scotland and England to visit maltsters and breweries to gather as much useful information as she could. Both she and Nick visited Lakes Brew Co. in Kendal, Gan Yam Brew, also in Kendal, Chainhouse Brew Co. in Preston, and Rivington Brewing Co. in Rivington, Lancashire to chat about the intricacies of setting up a brewery and tap room. The fact that the brewing world is so open to collaboration and community support even during such difficult times for the industry is incredibly inspiring to me. That people still find the time to lift others up is wonderful.

Visiting the Kerroo Brewing tap room during TT practice week meant we caught them just before the mad rush of Port Erin Day (a day festival of food, drink, and tie-ins with motorbike-riding visitors to the TT races) and race week. Their hazy pale ale was a delicious burst of grapefruit and passionfruit, reminding me of Rivington’s Never Known Fog Like It, but a more sessionable, calmer cousin—one with a bite of refreshing bitterness and a little prickle of lemon zest left on your tongue.

Brewing hazy IPAs is a big step for an Isle of Man-based brewery. The Island’s beer purity laws, much like the Reinheitsgebot, were brought into effect by the island’s first commercial brewery, Okells, to prevent beer being made with inferior or unsuitable ingredients. Nick is making a fruit sour in his second fermenter, and pulls back a thermal blanket to show us its thick, bubbling, pinkness. He looks very excited about it.

“We asked if it was actually illegal to make a beer like this,” says Elizabeth. “Technically…it’s a grey area. I don’t think so. I don’t think anyone is going to prison.” All jokes aside, it’s extremely Isle of Man for there to still be an archaic pseudo-law hanging around that nobody really knows what to do with. There’s no way Kerroo’s beer is really illegal—but Dr. Okell back in 1874 wouldn’t have approved. Good job he’s not still around.

I was impressed by Elizabeth and Nick, not just for their brewing skills but for their tenacity. To keep the dream alive over all these years without a space to call their own must have been incredibly hard, and I hope that when they look around their airy, perfectly Isle of Man-quirky tap room, they are filled with immense pride. They should be proud. The more beer they make, the more full it’ll become, and I can’t wait to come back to the island to try some deeply criminal sours.

Follow Kerroo Brewing on Instagram to keep up with their story.