One of my favourite chili recipes involves chocolate and beer. I tend to experiment with beers, depending on what I can find in Tesco on the day. As I have already tweeted, today’s chosen beer was the Double Stout from Hook Norton Brewery in Oxfordshire. I always make a point of tasting the beer before it goes into the pot, and I was very impressed. And this from a Guinness fanatic.

The reason I am blogging, however, is that the brewery is rather interesting. It was founded in 1849, which is probably quite young for the UK, but is still using the same premises. In particular the brewery has its own power plant: a steam engine installed in 1899. They don’t use it every day now, but it is still in working order. They have Shire horses as well.

And judging by their stout, the beers are good too. I think I’ll look out for their new wheat beer.