The Dark Star Brewing Company was born in 1994 in the cellar of The Evening Star Pub, in Brighton. With a brew plant only marginally bigger than an enthusiastic home-brew kit the characteristic style of hoppy beers was developed and tried out on the willing guinea pigs at the bar.
Within a few hard working years it was obvious that the brewery could not keep up with the growing thirst of the Evening Star’s drinkers, yet alone the demand for its beers from other local pubs and beer festivals.
In 2001, the team emptied their piggy banks, cashed in any ISA’s, sold TV’s and dug around behind the sofa for loose change, to relocate the brewery to a new purpose-built, 15 brewers barrel brewery in Ansty, near Haywards Heath – some would argue this was the point the hobby started to become a proper business…some would anyway. A few years on, and once again the brewery was on the move, this time to a bigger site in Partridge Green, just south west of Horsham, West Sussex.
No one really wanted to leave the cellar of the pub, but apparently more and more people liked drinking the same beers as us, so we needed to brew more…
The name Dark Star was given to a dark strong bitter brewed by the young Rob Jones for Pitfield Brewery in London in 1987. In Rob’s long-haired hippy days he named the brew after the music of The Grateful Dead although years later he still unashamedly takes the credit for the perfect assonance and eerie oxymoron within the name. The beer went on to be Champion Beer of Britain and then later the 25 year Champion of Champions.