Hawkstone

2,500 free kegs. Roughly 220,000 free pints.
4,000 pubs in under two years.

Hawkstone just built one of Britain's fastest-growing brewery networks.

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THE SETUP

Rick and Emma Keene founded Cotswold Brewing Co in 2004, brewing German style lagers when most UK micros were making ale.

In 2021 Jeremy Clarkson bought in alongside entrepreneur Johnny Hornby, renamed it Hawkstone and used surplus barley from his own farm as the story.

Hawkstone became Britain’s number one selling beer on Amazon within hours of launch. Production went from 4,000 litres to over 35,000 in the first year.

Then Clarkson bought a pub.

Everyone assumed the beer was selling itself. Five million people a week were watching him farm the barley on TV.

Fame got Hawkstone noticed. It didn’t get him a single new tap. A landlord doesn’t put a beer on because a customer recognises the face on the pump.

So, in 2024 he started giving kegs away. 500 that year. 1,000 in 2025. 1,000 again in 2026. Each keg is 88 free pints, no obligation beyond trying the beer.

Peroni and Madri were spending their budgets on adverts aimed at drinkers. Clarkson spent his on the landlords who decide what’s on the pump.

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THE MOMENT

Clarkson stands behind the bar at The Farmer’s Dog and runs the numbers himself. Every £100 over the counter leaves him with £6 once food and staff are paid.

Hawkstone is the only thing pushing that back towards break even. Pints at £6 to £7, margin he controls end to end, against food he admits loses him roughly £10 a head.

The beer wasn't just another item on the menu. It was what kept the pub open.

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THE NUMBERS (FY24 – FY26)

→ Revenue: £7.8m to £21.3m to £44.9m across three years to March 2026

→ Pub estate: 500 in 2024, over 4,000 by early 2026

→ Free kegs given away since 2024: 2,500, roughly 220,000 free pints

→ Off trade: Waitrose nationwide from October 2024, Sainsbury’s from April 2025, over 2,000 retail outlets by 2026

→ Hawkstone Premium named best lager in England at the World Beer Awards 2024. Hawkstone IPA took gold as Britain’s best in 2025

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THE PLAYBOOK

1. The face sells, the team scales

→ Hornby ran an ad agency before joining. Jenkins came in as MD after running distribution at C&C, the company behind Magners and Tennent's.

→ Hawkstone is brewed at C&C's Glasgow site, so it can scale without building its own plant.

→ Heineken took a stake, giving Hawkstone more weight with retailers than a one-man celebrity brand would have.

→ Clarkson gets the beer noticed. The team behind him gets it made and delivered.

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2. The pubs no one else could sell to

→ Most pubs are tied to one big brewer. The contract decides what's on tap, not the landlord.

→ Around 4 in 10 British pubs have no tie at all. Nobody owns them, so anyone can sell to them.

→ A tied pub means the big brewers don't have to compete for it. An untied pub means Hawkstone only has to win over one person.

→ That's the gap Peroni and Madri can't get into, no matter how much they spend.

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3. Pub sales bought the supermarket meeting

→ Supermarkets don't list a beer because it's on TV. They list it because it's already selling.

→ By the time Hawkstone got into Waitrose, then Sainsbury's, it could show buyers real numbers from thousands of pubs.

→ A World Beer Awards medal helped the pitch, but it wasn't what got the beer on the shelf.

→ The pub sales did that.

→ Every new pub added more proof. Every supermarket listing added more pubs. One fed the other.

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THE CLOSE

Clarkson still lost the contract to supply beer at Lord's Cricket Ground to Peroni in 2026. The biggest stages in British sport and sponsorship, from Lord's to Formula One, are still locked up by Heineken, Carlsberg and AB InBev.

That hasn't slowed the pub count down.

Hawkstone was never really a beer business. It's a distribution business that happens to sell beer.

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