IF YOU have the bottle for it - and it's a big assumption - I bring
you Episode Three in the Botanical Brewing saga. This time the source is closer to home than Gateshead, centre for
what appears to be the sole remaining commercial botanical brewer in the country. Diane Lockwood of Berry Brow supplies us with a picture of a bottle
she inherited a few years ago. It was in the cellar of the house she moved into.
"The result is I can't tell you anything about it," she confesses.
The label says "F Mallinson & Son, Botanical Brewers & Co, Ivy
House, Lindley Moor." It has a print of an ivy leaf to the left-hand side and a house to
the right-hand side. Another reader says she has a bottle labelled "Clewer and Stott,
botanical brewers of the Star Brewery, Slaithwaite." This one, so near to home, cannot be dated, but one very similar to
it, if not identical, has been spotted in Colne Valley Museum.
