Welcome to South Bedfordshire

Something’s brewing in Bedford

To the rear of the packaging hall at the Eagle brewery in Bedford is one of the largest cask racking systems I’ve ever seen. As it happens, it’s also a machine with a bit of history. It was once the property of the Strangeway’s brewery – once the home of Boddington’s – and was acquired by Charles Wells before the Manchester brewery was demolished in 2007. Today, however, it sits in silence, while the larger keg-packaging line opposite busily clunks and whirrs away with two bright yellow robot arms pirouetting like its the crescendo of Swan Lake as they stack kegs onto pallets. Cask beer hasn’t been produced at the Eagle brewery since 2022, when it was acquired by Barcelona’s Damm brewery.