Yet another new brewery, but this time it is from Pontypridd in Wales, rather than the West Country. It was set up in the summer of 2005. The brew plant was originally from the Moor Beer Company in Somerset (the West Country connection?). It originally brewed only draught beer but started producing bottled beers a couple of years ago.
Nick Otley, the brewery's Director, explained the concept behind the business in the following bit of Welsh waffle:
"When we had the idea of producing award winning beers the likes of which had not been done in Wales before, we knew we had to do something new and fresh with the visual aspect of the brand as well as the quality of the product itself. Traditionally Real Ales have suffered from what I call, “the woolly cardigan and beard syndrome”. The way most real ales have been promoted in the market place is like that of an old comfort blanket. Names that express snuggled up feelings, quiet places in the country side, old lost uncles and tired innuendos are too numerous to mention and as much as the responsible brewers think they are being witty, they are only seeming tired, droll, over ripe and worst of all they end up alienating a large portion of the market."
"We had the idea to launch a brand that would appear fresh, modern, simple and a little intriguing. You have to immerse yourself a little in the product to find out a little more about it. The simplicity of the black and white seemed to us an obvious choice, the graphic’s potential is vast and when stacked on a busy shelf with other numerous products it‘s simplicity screams for your attention. The ‘O’ we use from Otley, being our family name has enabled us to compile a range of simple names for the beers, O1, O2, OBB, OG, O8 and even a Dark O stout.
This was simply a way of labelling the products almost like an industrial stamp rather than a
flowery meaningless name and was to prove popular with the new young drinking scene, a sector
of the market not normally associated with Real Ales. Suddenly we had a product that visually did not throw up any barriers to new drinkers, young people and women who we knew were key to our products success."
"The aim of producing a product with serious award winning credentials has to be and has been
backed up with a simple but professional recognisable brand that already after only three years is being recognised on sight as an Otley product. Being a Welsh product we also were very keen on using the welsh language and we did this on the bilingual bottle labels listing the ingredients in Welsh and English and on the bottle cases where we also use bilingual packaging without throwing the Welsh angle in people's faces. Some Welsh as proud as they are of being Welsh can’t actually speak it, so we don’t want to alienate them either."
"We had the idea to launch a brand that would appear fresh, modern, simple and a little intriguing. You have to immerse yourself a little in the product to find out a little more about it. The simplicity of the black and white seemed to us an obvious choice, the graphic’s potential is vast and when stacked on a busy shelf with other numerous products it‘s simplicity screams for your attention. The ‘O’ we use from Otley, being our family name has enabled us to compile a range of simple names for the beers, O1, O2, OBB, OG, O8 and even a Dark O stout.
This was simply a way of labelling the products almost like an industrial stamp rather than a
flowery meaningless name and was to prove popular with the new young drinking scene, a sector
of the market not normally associated with Real Ales. Suddenly we had a product that visually did not throw up any barriers to new drinkers, young people and women who we knew were key to our products success."
"The aim of producing a product with serious award winning credentials has to be and has been
backed up with a simple but professional recognisable brand that already after only three years is being recognised on sight as an Otley product. Being a Welsh product we also were very keen on using the welsh language and we did this on the bilingual bottle labels listing the ingredients in Welsh and English and on the bottle cases where we also use bilingual packaging without throwing the Welsh angle in people's faces. Some Welsh as proud as they are of being Welsh can’t actually speak it, so we don’t want to alienate them either."
You can find more waffle like this at http://www.otleybrewing.co.uk/.
You can see the labelling in the picture. It certainly does not look like a traditional beer label, does it?
O1 is what they describe as their flagship beer. It is a straw coloured pale ale, well hopped and very tasty indeed. I can imagine that it would appeal to beer drinkers and non-beer drinkers alike. It has won the gold medal twice at the CAMRA Welsh Beer Festival and also the bronze medal at the 2007 CAMRA Great British Beer Festival, so Otley have already achieved their goal of producing an award winning beer.
The labelling policy does result on information on the ingredients being a bit sparse. The label (English section) tells us that the beer contains "Brecon Water, Malted Barley, Hops and Yeast". I have managed to establish from other sources that the hops are Styrian Goldings. ABV is 4.0% and it does not appear to be bottle conditioned.
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