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Gary Oldershaw started brewing with beer
kits when he was 17 and now, with his wife
Diane, produces about 42,000 gallons of real ale
a year. They supply pubs both locally and as far afield as Yorkshire, Norwich, Staffordshire and
Hertfordshire.
The brewery stands adjacent to the family home
in Harrowby just outside Grantham.
 When Gary took a redundancy deal from BT in 1996
to set up the brewery with his wife Diane and
two small daughters people said they were mad.
But Gary using his expertise as a planning
tactician with BT studied the market and
contacted potential outlets and decided to take
the plunge.
Brewing beer for a living had not been a
lifelong ambition but was perhaps something
which had spent several years fermenting in
Gary's mind. The final decision was made to set
up a brewery after building a small full mash
hobby brewery in an old wash house at the rear
of a former home in Kimberley, Nottingham. Here
Gary was making beer as good or better than
other commercially produced beers.
With the 'good life' idea in the back of their
minds, they used the £30,000 redundancy cheque
and another £30,000 to set up the brewery from
their new home in Harrowby rather than moving
onto an industrial estate.
Much of the equipment came from Shires Brewery
in Bedfordshire which by coincidence had also
been run by two BT engineers on a part-time
basis but it had become too much for them and
they had decided to close down. The brewery was
built during the middle of 1996 and after trials
the first beers were sold in January 1997. The
first two beers were called 'First Edition' and
'Liberation'.
 Over the years the plant has been improved and
extended.
In 2007, a new nine barrel brewery was
manufactured by
Abbotts of Newark. After a small extension
to the front of the building the new plant was
installed and working by late Spring. The old
plant was sold and used to set up the new 'Tydd
Steam' brewery.
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