Brewing from the heart.

(From The Publican's Morning Advertiser)

Once he headed UK on and off-trade businesses for the world's third-largest brewer. Now John Holberry is about to become chairman of a brewery so small he'd never heard of it until this year. Phil Mellows finds out what's bitten him about Growler

Remember the autovac? Those were the days, John Holberry remembers. He started his drinking career on Tetley's Bitter when it was served via an autovac a dispense system for recirculating waste beer from the drip tray that was later, understandably you might think, outlawed.

"It produced a very creamy pint," he says. "It was a wonderful beer. After they banned the autovac it was never the same."

Perhaps we're better off without the autovac. But Holberry isn't so sure about Stones Brewery, closed by Bass Brewery in 1999.

Stones produced a quaffable golden ale that would these days be the height of fashion. It also possessed what would now be a prized provenance as the beer of Sheffield.

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