A trio of branch members visited two breweries in West Sussex, both in the North Sussex CAMRA Branch area, to make an award to each. Our first stop was to visit Brook at Brolly Brewery in Wisborough Green; to deliver the brewery award from the National Members’ Weekend Members’ Bar, the Beer of the Bar, for his beer Burble, an English pale ale. We had a warm welcome as we discovered that this was his first CAMRA award, we were given samples of two excellent contrasting beers, a pale and a dark. There was plenty of beer talk as we heard of his planned move from the current isolated premises to a larger place in Horsham and of his micropub in Billingshurst, The Billi Tap. The pictures show us with Brook, (holding the certificate), inside the brewery and a view outside, where in the summer, beer festivals have been held. He kindly gave us takeaway cans of the beers we sampled as we left him to return to his brewing.




The second stop was at Kissingate in Lower Beeding, another very cordial welcome, this time from our hosts Gary and Bunny, Bunny kindly providing a complimentary lunch and Gary giving us beer to go with it. This award was from the 2021 Eastbourne Beer Festival, Sussex Beer of the Festival, to add to Kissingate’s impressive ‘wall of awards’, part of which can be seen behind us in the picture, the flow to which had been interrupted by the pandemic. Unsurprisingly there was another round of beer talk: how things have changed for brewers during and after Covid and the impressive story of how Bunny and Gary have built up the excellent venue and brewery in which we were seated. All too soon it was time for home, but not before bottles had been purchased to add to the cans bought in the morning.