BIG DIG BREWHOUSE
Beers you will love.
The Big Dig Brewhouse is a small-batch artisan brewery making craft beer for discerning drinkers.
And non-discerning drinkers. We aren't fussy.
There has been brewing, and drinking, on this site for around two thousand years. True. So, keep the tradition alive and visit our infrequent and irregular taprooms for history-making beers and (when available) decent grub.
Upcoming Taprooms
Burn's Night Tap, the noo!
24th January 2025 - 5pm to 8pm
Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o the puddin' race! - or some such gibberish. Scottish beer not available.
Week 8 already!
21st February 2025 - 5pm to 8pm
We are nearly there folks, spring will soon be upon us. But for now, we will enjoy cosy nights in the Silo bar and around the fire.
It's all about the BEER
We make beers that we like to drink. That's about all there is to say.
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If you like unconventional beers with big flavours,
if you love cask ale, but also the keg,
if you enjoy good company (in a farmyard),
if you don't care if your beer is hazy or clear,
if it has a head or not,
if it is warm or chilled, and,
if you love the idea of a few friends making beers for everyone to enjoy,
then,
you are Big Dig.
Meet your beers
Life is like a box of chocolates.
It's the same at the brewhouse.
We brew whatever takes our fancy and you drink it.
Here is your beer lottery....
Duropolis Rising
The name comes from the Bournemouth University Big Dig Team as they started to expose an Iron Age settlement. Duropolis rose up from the ground, just as brewing has been reincarnated in the Winterborne Valley.
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A bold New England IPA style hazy pale ale. The haziness comes from wheat and oat flakes added during the mash. The beer is super fruity and juicy from four different varieties of hop (Amarillo, Citra, Mosaic and Nectaron).
It’s a bold beer – which is how we like it.
Spindlewhorl
A real crowd pleaser. In the Iron Age a weight, known as a whorl, would be attached to the end of a spindle and used to spin threads out during textile manufacture. Many Spindlewhorls have been found by the Big Dig Team and we thought it was a cracking name for a beer.
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It is a Red Ale – made with red rye crystal malt to give the beer its colour and caramel sweetness. Classic English East Kent Goldings provide some bitterness with Amarillo (from USA) bringing a real citrusy edge.
It’s is a medium strength beer so won't make your spindle whorl too much!
Hop Dig
Sunny Republic brewery, brewed Hop Dog on this site sometime after the Romans had packed up and left. Thanks to Brent and Rosie for the original concept.
​Hop Dig uses a combination of three types of grain, three types of hops (Chinook, Centennial and Columbus) and a ferocious American yeast to make this IPA a real diggers delight.
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It's a strong brew, it will make you think you can dance well.
Please gyrate responsibly!
Banjo
Big Dig archaeologists discovered an early Iron Age enclosure on the Winterborne Kingston site, comprising an oval-ish area surrounded by a ditch with an elongated entrance passage – thus Banjo Enclosure. They are often identified from above by crop marks.
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The Durotriges tribe lived here, in Dorset-ish, the neighbouring tribe to the East, in Hampshire-ish, was the Belgae. They gave their name to the Roman province of Gallia Belgica and, later, to the modern country of Belgium. And so we have Banjo: a Belgian Pale Ale. Banjo is brewed with Belgian Pale and caramunich malts, saaz hops and, most importantly, saison yeast. The result is a strong, dry, spicy but smooth, copper-coloured brew. Take care, it's strong stuff. There is a new catchphrase in the Brewhouse - to Get Banjoed!
Digging for Gold
We know that archaeologists aren’t treasure hunters, but even they must get a little excited if they spot a flash of gold when they're on the dig. Unlike most metals, gold never tarnishes and it will appear as bright and shiny as when it was first buried thousands of years ago.
Big Dig’s Digging for Gold will make any archaeologist excited. It’s an easy drinking session beer, brewed with a combination of British and new world hops. From Britain we have Pilgrim and Target to give a refreshing sharpness and rounded bitterness. From the new world we’ve used Cascade and Citra to impart some subtle fruit and citrus flavours.
Digging for Gold may not be as valuable as real gold but you won’t have to take it to a museum when you discover it in the brewhouse!
Whalebone
Whalebone was a name looking for a beer. Coffee Stout was a beer looking for a name. Snap!
A whale's bone, a vertebra to be exact, was found in a pit at the Big Dig. It is thought to have been treasured by the Iron Age Durotriges tribe who lived here over two thousand years ago. How a whale bone came to be in Dorset a couple of millennia ago is baffling. Slightly less bewildering is the obvious fusion of Stout, the darkest of beers, and coffee, the quickest of beverages.
Whalebone is brewed with chocolate malt, roasted barley and oats, which classically give stouts their distinctive colour, texture and taste. Coarse-ground coffee, roasted right here by Beanpress, and fresh vanilla pods result in a smooth, luscious brew with a hit of coffee. Wake up, and smell the Whale!
Hammerstone
A hammerstone is, you’ll never guess, a stone used as a hammer. But it was more than that, it was a universal tool, used from the stone age onwards, as a hammer, for chipping flint, for processing food, or breaking up bones and other materials. A few hammerstones showed up during the 2024 Big Dig and are thought to be from the Iron age, they were used to crush iron ore into powder ready for smelting.
Big Dig Hammerstone is a New Zealand IPA. Brewed with Kohatu (which means stone in Maori – tenuous link established!) and Nelson Sauvin hops native to New Zealand. We added Galaxy hops (from Australia. Close enough). Get ready for tropical fruit, pine needles and grapes. Plenty of early addition hops in the brew make a smashing bitterness so, if you like IPA, we think you’ll (big) dig this Antipodean version. As they say in New Zealand: “Chur, bro” (Cheers bro)… Please ‘get hammered’ responsibly!
Nebulas
Nebulas is Latin for cloudy or hazy and that’s what this beer is all about. The haziness comes from flaked (not rolled*) wheat and flaked (not rolled**) oats. The flakes (not rollings) are mashed up with Pale, Munich and Carapils malt to give a pleasant malty background which really lets the hops show off. Nebulas has citrus (particularly grapefruit) and tropical fruit flavours, which spring from loads of full-on hops: Columbus, Cascade, El Dorado, Mosaic and Nectaron, added at 3 different stages of the brewing process.
The sky, clouds, rain, and seasons were all vitally important to the Romans. Living in Dorset they would have had their fair share of all that! We are sure that they would have loved a drop of Nebulas as they sheltered from another summer downpour, while they dreamt of the Italian sunshine.
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* Brewers really care about this stuff
** told you
Golden Stater
The Golden Stater is the blingier version of the standard Stater, the coin which inspired our great logo. The apparently random pattern is an abstract image of a disjointed horse. Of course it is.
Big Dig Golden Stater is also random and disjointed and we love it. It's an unconventional cross between German Kölsch and Belgian Witbier. It is brewed using a combination of Pilsner, Pale and Wheat malts with a lagery buzz from Saaz hops. Then we add disjointed flavours from orange peel and coriander seeds. Quite mad. Unusually, the beer is fermented cool and then cold conditioned. The result is a flavoursome, smooth and golden hybrid of lager, ale and witbier. Let your taste buds savour this wonderful concoction.
Welcome to the Iron Age.
Amulet
A delightful jewel of a beer. Amulet is an amber ale. Very English, very Big Dig and, very, er, ambery. The word "amulet" comes from the Latin word amuletum, meaning "an object that protects a person from trouble". Well, that ain’t happenin’. It’s a fairly strong contender, so don’t be going crazy now, or you will be in trouble.
Here we have classic English malts from the downs, southern British hops from the home counties, and Nottingham yeast from, well, we aren’t sure. All brewed up into a crystal-clear, rich malty ale which is easy on the bitterness and easy on the eye.
Random musings
We love to experiment, here are some occasional beers that you may be lucky to find on tap.
Durnovaria
What Have the Europeans Ever Done for Us? Well, apart from the aqueducts, sanitation, roads, and public order… they founded Durnovaria (modern-day Dorchester). They adorned it with fancy mosaics of gods and sea monsters – because nothing says “civilization” like a pixellated monster cartoon.
They probably also invented the all-nighter. Julius Caesar pulling one to finish his speech: “Friends, Romans, Beer drinkers…”
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Fast-forward a couple of millennia, another invasion… Eurofizz lager. Oh, how we all hated it. At Big Dig Brewhouse, we’re beer enthusiasts. We say, “Don’t knock it ‘till you’ve brewed it.” So, we mashed up a cold one: Durnovaria Dortmunder Lager. Fermented cold with classic ingredients (Pilsner and Munich malts, Saaz and Tettnang hops, and Bohemian yeast). Full-flavoured, easy-drinking – pretty darned good, even for ale geeks like us.
So, grab a pint of this Euro-charmer, raise your tankard, salute the Romans, and bibe bene!
Winterborne Warmer
There were more than 150 roundhouses in Duropolis, the Iron Age ‘city’ discovered on North West Farm in Winterborne Kingston. The roundhouse was central to the life in the Iron Age, they provided shelter, storage and each house had a fire for warmth and cooking.
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Winterborne Warmer is a spiced ale that provides your personal roundhouse with a fiery glow. It’s a dark, rich beer with a hints of bitter chocolate, star anise and cinnamon (if you concentrate hard enough). Traditionally, spiced beers are for the sunless solstace, but if you want to have a touch of winter on a sweltering July evening in the farmyard, crack on!
Cow Horse
Animal bones, combined into a hybrid creature with the body of a cow and the head of a horse, were found beneath Iron Age human burials in Duropolis. The fabled CowHorse was possibly an offering to pagan gods. We now offer this hybrid brew to the Gods of Beer.
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CowHorse is a session Dark Lager (yes, that’s a thing) – brewed with 5 types of grain, including Pilsner Malt, Caramunich and Special B, and 3 types of hops (Amarillo, Citra and Tettnang). It's fermented with US West Coast yeast. If that sounds like random ingredients thrown together, it is. It’s a recipe created using surplus ingredients from other brews, but the combination was carefully formulated, and turned out to be lush. A creamy, caramelly and malty beer, with a hint of bitterness, and, remarkably, the crispness you get from a lager.
Neigh? Moo!
BORN IN THE BOIL
We make beer.
Water, grains, hops, yeast. That's it. No funny stuff, no chemicals, no fishy bits. All Vegan. Natural beer made from things that grow.
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In 2015 an Iron Age brewery was discovered at the Big Dig archaeological excavations. Now, two thousand years after the Durotrigians were partying, it’s our turn. Seven people who love beer and good times formed a partnership and bought some fancy kit and a few buckets. The partners come from various walks of life, and all contribute on a part-time basis. Two of the team have loads of experience of brewing a variety of lovely beers from fine ingredients, and the other partners are quickly learning that brewing is 90% cleaning and 10% paperwork!
We received our licence to brew in June 2023 (more paperwork) and were very pleased to serve our first beer at the Durotriges Project Big Dig 2023 Open Day. Please ask to look around our nano-brewery, and see our extensive paperwork collection.
Contact Us
Come on down
NorthWest Farm,
West Street
Winterborne Kingston
Dorset
DT11 9AT
Contact
Opening Hours
Occasional taprooms on Fridays only.
5pm - 8pm
AWRS: XFAW00000120855