Stu Brew, Europe's first student-led brewery at Newcastle University, has scaled up production of its stout Exam Room Tears with help from a Cornish brewery. The collaboration allows the beer to feature in Wetherspoons' national festival across UK pubs. Students and staff visited St Austell Brewery in Cornwall to brew 500 casks.
Stu Brew, based at Newcastle University, is Europe's first student-led brewery. It maintains a permanent keg line and supplies guest cask lines at the Students’ Union-run Wetherspoons on campus. This relationship led to an invitation for Stu Brew to participate in Wetherspoons' national beer festival, held from March 4 to 15.
The festival required 500 casks of Stu Brew's popular maple and pecan stout, Exam Room Tears, which has a 5.5% ABV. Producing this volume would have taken over a year using Stu Brew's own equipment. To meet the demand, Dr Chris O’Malley, senior lecturer in chemical engineering and head brewer at Stu Brew, contacted Georgina Young, head brewer at St Austell Brewery. They had previously met while judging for the British Guild of Beer Writers.
St Austell Brewery hosted the Stu Brew team at its historic Victorian headquarters in Cornwall, where beers like Tribute and Proper Job are produced. During the visit, the group brewed the stout and also created a brown ale on a small-batch kit for fun. Students Kypros Iakovou and Will Tyson joined Dr O’Malley on the trip, marking their first visit to both the brewery and Cornwall.
Georgina Young commented: “Working with the Stu Brew team was a great experience. Exam Room Tears is a fantastic cask beer and helping them bring it to festival scale felt like a brilliant way to support the next generation of brewers.”
Will Tyson shared: “Every brewery is unique, but St Austell really stood out - it was this maze of history, with different layers of the site built up over generations. You could see the heritage all around you while still watching a modern brewery in action. It was a special environment to learn in, and really interesting to see how different brewing on a much larger scale was.”
Exam Room Tears is now available at Wetherspoons pubs nationwide during the festival.
