THE River Cocker

The river takes its name from the Brythonic Celtic word ‘kukra’ meaning “THE CROOKED ONE

Our Story

We are Crooked River Brewing Co, a craft beer company based on the fringe of the Lake District in West Cumbria.

Our story began in 2022 with the disruption of Cockermouth's brewing heritage when the closure of its last active brewery; Jennings was announced. The closure represented over 150 years of deep historical significance and posed a threat to the integrity of our town’s brewing and cultural identity. This motivated us to step up and do something to help restore and preserve our region's future as a brewing destination, and so, Crooked River Brewing Co was born.

Thankfully our friends at Tractor Shed Brewing gave us a place to brew, sharing our vision to see greater diversity and reputation for great locally made beer.

We have since worked hard to brew SIBA award winning beers. Our range is led by a foursome of hop-forward classics - Pacific Ale, award winning DDH Pale, a classic West Coast IPA and a gluten free Helles Lager. We also regularly introduce unique limited releases to keep our drinkers thirsty for more.

After years of living overseas and experiencing the global world of craft breweries, we've made a pledge to our community to bring that experience to West Cumbria it starts with making some tasty beers and having a ton of fun doing it.

We hope you enjoy our beers, cheers!

silver award winner

siba bottle and can awards 2023

up & coming fest

shortlisted emerging brewery 2023

proud sponsor of

ALLerdale wildcats ladies football team

Alan Fitton-Crellin
Phil Scholey

phil scholey
Founder / director

alan fitton- crellin
founder / head brewer

  • Our beer is brewed at Tractor Shed Brewing in Workington by our Head Brewer and with the help of the Tractor Shed team.

  • We launched our first beers at Cockermouth Taste Cumbria Festival in 2022 and for the remainder of the year we supplied a small handful of shops in West Cumbria.

    Late 2022 / early 2023 we upscaled our production and relaunched our business to begin trading across the regional wholesale market.

  • Yes, one day we hope to open a brewery…

    In fact, we initially set out to open a brewery in Cockermouth but it quickly became apparent that the reality of this is too far out of our reach right now (even with significant crowdfund support).

    Unfortunately the beer industry has been heavily impacted by economic instability (plus rising production and energy costs) so we are mindful that its a very risky time to be launching a beer company.

    We’re carefully assessing the economic risks to help guide our plans for expansion but in the meantime, Tractor Shed Brewing have kindly thrown us a lifeline and we will continue to brew our beer at the neighbouring brewery for the immediate future at least.

  • Currently, we brew at the nearby Tractor Shed Brewing in Workington but the management of the business and the packaging centre we use are both based in Cockermouth.

  • We have three core beers

    1. Pacific Ale

    2. DDH Pale

    3. West Coast IPA

    We also do regular limited release beers so usually will have 4-5 beers of different styles available in total.

  • Cumbria already has some amazing cask breweries. We want to add further diveristy to the beer options in our region by focusing on more modern styles of craft beer which is more of an emerging market in comparison.

  • You can buy our beers online via our web shop. and we can deliver nation wide. Unfortunately our beer is not available outside of the UK.

    We recommend you visit our homepage to see which businesses currently stock our beer. We update this regularly and will highlight where it is available on draught too.

  • Following the closure of the Jennings Brewery in Cockermouth ,we rallied local support via a crowdfund campaign to help us find a way to reinstate the brewing heritage for West Cumbria.

    Funds raised have helped us launch our wholesale and retail business making our beers accessible across Cumbria and giving our region a chance to continue its reputation for brewing tasty beers

  • No, but we have held several sold out events this year which have motivated us to explore beer festival options for next year. We are at the early planning stages but hope to announce more details soon.

  • Now that we’ve established ourselves in the local beer market we have our sights set nationally.

    We hope to see our beers at more bars and events throughout the country and do more events locally in the new year.