What do you do with an old fort? Why brew beer, of course

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Feel the economic storm beating down? Maybe it's time pull up the drawbridge and get back to the old fort. Unless you're Neale Brickwood and you're already in the business of running one.

Brickwood's "office" is Spitbank Fort, a rugged man-made island of granite and iron, not quite two kilometres offshore from Portsmouth on the south coast of England, right across from Dieppe.

It was originally built in the 1860s to defend the harbour against a possible French invasion, part of a series of forts commissioned by then prime minister Lord Palmerston that came to be known as Palmerston's Follies.

Equipped with nine 12.5-inch, 38-tonne cannons, the forts never fired a shot in anger. The military decommissioned them in the 1950s and they were privately sold off.

The best defence

We had just set off when the phone rings. "It's Neale, we're going back" says Lea, my guide, who adds smiling, "he always finds a way."

Owner Neale Brickwood had been delayed on business in France and we hadn't expected to see him on this trip.

A quick turnaround and now the compass has swung back south. From the cabin of the small fishing boat, Spitbank Fort's low silhouette cuts the pewter horizon.

Over the roar of the engine, Brickwood explains that he bought the fort three year ago with two partners and they've been breaking even running it as a museum and venue for social events.

"We're doing alright, this year's bookings are ahead of last year's but you can always do better." He hopes his newest idea, to create a microbrewery at the fort, in the middle of the English Channel, will help them through the stormy waters of the current recession.  

The small boat slows and bumps gently against the pier. Solid as a Second World War bunker, but with elegant Victorian brick archways and iron railings, the look is foreboding, with a dash of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.

At first glance, you can see how it could be a beer drinker's fantasy brewery.

Our footsteps echo around the brick walls as I follow Brickwood down a spiral staircase to the gunpowder catacombs. He stops in front of a nondescript red pipe. This is the fount of an artesian well like few others in Britain today.

"The original Victorians drilled this well out," Brickwood says. "It was one of the first things they did, to provide fresh water for the fort and the men."

"This well actually goes down 400 feet into the seabed. It's fresh water from the chalk aquifer that runs down from Portsdown Hill to the Isle of Wight, which obviously filters the water."

"It tastes lovely, fresh from the source, better than any bottled water and so we're quite happy with that as a source for our beer. The beer will be unique and brewed under exceptional circumstances."

Pubs are closing

Exceptional, no doubt. But so is the current business climate.

"I wish him the best of luck," laughs Mark Hastings of the British Beer and Pub Association. Hastings is supportive of the new venture but with a tsunami of 39 pubs a week closing in Britain he knows that Brickwood is up against a tempest that not even a stone fort might withstand.

"He's got just as much chance of making it as anyone else does," Hastings observes. "If he gets his marketing right, he gets the beer offer right and he targets those consumers in the right way, he'll make a go of it."

The beer industry, you would think, should be immune to recession. How else to drown your sorrows? But this is not a good time on either side of the Atlantic.

"In Canada the big breweries have seen their profits nearly halved this year," says Bill Perrie, the author of Canada's Best Pubs. "But microbreweries and brew pubs should be more resilient.

"People have just had enough of the same old, same old and even in the UK all those old gorgeous pubs are being bought up by big corporations. I think for a guy to bring in a brew pub and make it a bit like a microbrewery attraction should do alright."

With his expansion plans before Portsmouth council, Brickwood feels he has something unique here, a defiant place for British beer drinkers to taste a distinct offering while peering out at the continent to the south.

Besides, he says, "it would cost us more to close, we would lose key staff that we don't want to lose and so we decided to stay open and actually push the business."

Marketing a microbrewery in the current financial crisis won't be easy but one thing is certain, in these uncertain economic times Neale Brickwood isn't ready to simply pull up the drawbridge and let the world pass him by.