Polly's Brew Co.
Location: Mold, Wales
Established: 2018
Speciality: Fresh, modern, hop-forward beers. Seasonal ranges. Awesome cans!
From the brewery:
Polly’s Brew Co came into existence back in 2018 as LOKA POLLY, after owner and founder Sean had grown weary of running a cask-led brewery with his previous operation, The Black Brook Beer Co. The genesis of LOKA POLLY/Polly’s was definitely evident in the beers Sean was brewing under the Black Brook name, but in a market as traditional and primarily cask-focused as North Wales, hazy beers just were proving too divisive amongst the cask drinkers, and chiefly too expensive to produce.
The decision to liquidate Black Brook came within around six months of operating,
and he decided to rebrand and refocus his efforts, to produce beer in exclusively keg and can, with a focus on fresh, modern, hop forward beers. After convincing his parents to subsidize the cost of some shiny steel tanks from China, and now having his first employee in Arron heading up the sales side of things, LOKA POLLY came roaring into the world in January 2018.
The original LOKA POLLY name was an amalgamation of the two previous uses of the original brewery site. Sean’s twin brother James had a graphic design project based in there, named Loka Island. Previous to that, the space was a working stable house, where the family horse, Polly lived. After dissolving Black Brook, Sean wanted a name that was intentionally ambiguous in terms of geographical ties. LOKA POLLY sounded like it could have been based in North Wales as much as it could have been based in London or Scandinavia.
After a phenomenal first year where our output trebled in size,
the brewery began exporting to mainland Europe, added our second employee in assistant brewer Scott, and were lucky enough to pour next to some of the UK's elite breweries, we chose to not rest on our laurels and plan for the future - a range of beers that would have us knocking on the door of the elite breweries we looked up to so much; the Augment range. As with everything else we do, the Augment range was six months in the planning process before we were happy to release it. To say it was a gamble would be an understatement – we plundered so much into the first Augment beers, that they simply had to be successful or it was game over. Thankfully, the praise was near-universal from drinkers and industry folk alike, and it’s allowed us to continue experimenting to this day.
After launching the Augment range in early March 2019, we came back to work shortly afterwards and were devastated to find a cease and desist letter from a Swedish multinational company, Spendrups on our desk. The LOKA POLLY name infringed on one of Spendrups umbrella brands, a canned soft drink called Loka. With no leg to stand on, we negotiated to rename in May 2019 as Polly’s Brew Co. Being sentimental home boys at heart, we were willing to lose the Loka part of our name, but losing Polly was just a bit too much.
