Sometimes, it doesn’t seem too long ago that we first started Eden - adding yet another brewery to the beer scene in Cumbria and selling our first few kegs of Eden Best to local pubs. But, even then, we knew that if we were really going to make the brewery fly we needed to look outside Cumbria - much further - to new markets thirsty for the kind of high quality, inventive beer that we produce.
That’s why, as keen Edenites will know, for a few years now we have been courting the Chinese and Japanese beer markets; visiting, researching, tasting and making contacts. And, last month, we dispatched our first batch of export beer to not one, but both of those countries.
On Friday April 13 thousands of bottles of our range of traditional classics went sailing their way 5000 miles around the world to Beijing where they will be distributed across the rest of the country. They’ll be joined by 20, 376 bottles of specially brewed fruit beers, which will be available exclusively in China.
In the same week, we sent a consignment of 180 key kegs of Thirsty Dog, Atomic Blonde and Dynamite the extra 700 miles or so to Japan, where Ikon Europub will distribute them across bars and pubs.
It would be an understatement to say that we’re pretty chuffed about all this.
It’s the culmination of a lot of work, not least all the effort and investment to get the brewery into a state where we can actually produce enough beer to fulfil the orders! There’s also something brilliant in thinking of people halfway across the world sitting down to sup beer produced by a bunch of overworked, swearing people in Penrith.
It’s slightly surreal, but if you’re going to grow a business, you’ve got to think big, put the doubts out of your mind and just go for it.
Today Penrith, tomorrow the world!
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