Castle Rock Brewery
Castle Rock began in 1977, when ex-CAMRA chairman Chris Holmes opened the Old King's Arms in Newark in defiance of monopolistic brewers. The Nottingham brewery followed in 1997, next to the Vat and Fiddle. After Harvest Pale became Supreme Champion Beer of Britain in 2010, capacity rose to 360 barrels a week. A 65 hl brewhouse and a 160-litre pilot kit share one house yeast. A move to Old Basford is approved, into a site built in 1891 as the Prince of Wales Brewery.
Beers by Castle Rock Brewery
17 beers
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The recurring character behind the beers
Castle Rock Brewery brew a broad range across 6 style families.
Across these 17 beers, 4 notes keep showing up:
Four notes carry across the range. That's a tight house style — most breweries in the catalogue share just one.
Compared with the wider catalogue of similar styles:
They stay close to the peer baseline on their recurring notes.
How we measure this
Two thresholds are at work here:
- The signature list shows notes that recur in at least 6% of this brewery's beers. A low bar — enough to flag a pattern, not high enough to call it an exclusive trait.
- The peer comparison below shows only notes where this brewery's coverage differs from similar breweries by at least 20 percentage points. A higher bar — enough to call a real difference, not a nudge.
A note can appear on the signature list without appearing in the peer comparison: it recurs here, but similar breweries do the same thing.
Black Gold
Their beers place in the Top 64% of the catalogue on average, across 3 ranked beers. One clear standout well ahead of the rest.
Similar Breweries
hopIQ exclusiveBased on style overlap and flavor profile
About Castle Rock Brewery
Castle Rock began in 1977, when ex-CAMRA chairman Chris Holmes opened the Old King's Arms in Newark in defiance of monopolistic brewers. The Nottingham brewery followed in 1997, next to the Vat and Fiddle. After Harvest Pale became Supreme Champion Beer of Britain in 2010, capacity rose to 360 barrels a week. A 65 hl brewhouse and a 160-litre pilot kit share one house yeast. A move to Old Basford is approved, into a site built in 1891 as the Prince of Wales Brewery.
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