Brewery Focus: Jen Trevithick - Ales of Scilly

For all breweries it’s been a tough couple of months but imagine being on an island that’s completely reliant on tourism. This is the situation that Ales of Scilly have found themselves in and we just had to catch up with Owner Jen Trevithick to see how they’re coping in the latest in our Brewery Focus series.

How much have things changed since before lockdown?

“So with lockdown, it’s like winter for us except with better weather. So we’re very seasonal down here, so no demand for any beer with the pubs being closed and it’s extremely quiet. We are doing free local deliveries though and have had a lot of online orders, people have started ordering our beer from the mainland, which is nice.”

What’s been your biggest challenge?

“We’re struggling to get stock over to be able to brew more which has been an interesting thing. Luckily we had a lot of stock in ready to brew for the summer, so we were lucky in that sense.”

What have you learnt?

“It’s been very localised down here. Usually we have new visitors that come over on the boat every day, so we’ve had to just keep Ales of Scilly in the local’s heads over here. It’s just been very different and odd, things have changed slightly and have scaled down and become a lot quieter and just more local.”

Can you share any of your future plans for after lockdown?

“It’s going to be business as usual as soon as we can. We actually launched a rebrand just a few weeks ago, which we had hoped to do a big summer rebrand sort of thing but it ended up being a very local rebrand. Future wise, when things do go back to normal, we’ll do our old taproom events at the brewery that we’ve put on hold for this summer.”

What will be the first pub that you hit up after lockdown and what will you be drinking?

“It will be The Seven Stones Inn at St Martin's, that will be my pub of choice. I’ve already told them the second that they open their doors I’ll be there! It’ll be one of their guest ales which is why I like going down there, it will be a mystery but exciting all the same!”Sounds like an awesome place Jen, hopefully we’ll make it down to visit the brewery some time in the future!