The brewery is sited at the old Eagle Maltings, built in 1841 to maltbarley for Clinch's brewery which had an estate of seventy-one pubs in Southern England. In 1961, Courage bought Clinch's for its pub estate and closed down the brewery. In 1983, part of the original Clinch's Eagle Brewery site was rented by Paddy Glenny, but named the brewing company Glenny Brewery. Chris Moss took his interest in exchange for a debt from Paddy and took over after Paddy Glenny moved away. In 1990, the Eagle was renamed the Wychwood Brewery after the ancient Wychwood Forest which borders Witney, at the same time the brewery moved to the Two Rivers Industrial estate still in Witney. In 1994 the brewery was moved back to the site taking on more of the old site. The brewery was taken over in 2002 by Refresh UK, a subsidiary of Marston's. Marston's then bought Refresh and Wychwood Brewery outright in 2008.
Beers
Hobgoblin
Hobgoblin is the best-known and most popular beer brewed at Wychwood Brewery and was created by Chris Moss. It is 5.2% abv in bottles, 4.5% in cans and 4.5% on cask, and is described by Wychwood as a "Ruby beer". Jeremy Moss, Wychwood's head brewer, describes the drink as "full bodied and well balanced with a chocolate toffee malt flavour, moderate bitterness and a distinctive fruity character with a ruby red glow". It was the first bottled beer in the UK to feature an illustrated label, as opposed to a simple text-based one, and it is currently the 2nd best-selling bottled ale in the UK. During a meeting at the 2010 G-20 Toronto summit, Prime Minister David Cameron and President Barack Obama gave each other bottles of beer from their respective home towns/cities, with Cameron presenting Obama with twelve bottles of Hobgoblin, which is brewed in his Witney constituency. In return Obama gave Cameron 24 bottles of Goose Island beer, from Goose Island Brewery. The President remarked that he would drink his beer chilled, as opposed to the optimal room temperature at which strong ale should be drunk, prompting Wychwood to create a T-shirt in their online store reading "What's the matter Obama, afraid you might taste something?".
King Goblin
King Goblin, essentially a stronger and more flavourful variety of Hobgoblin, is a 6.6% abv "Special Reserve" ale. To date it is available bottled in Asda, Morrisons and Tesco supermarkets, Draeger's supermarkets in the US, in "Broken English" shops in Berlin, and on draught during "real ale" festivals at Wetherspoons pubs.
Wychwood took over the brewing of the newly acquired Brakspear beers in October 2002. The new Brakspear brewery was integrated into an expansion of the Wychwood plant, and includes parts of the copper, as well as some of the fermenting vessels which themselves had been refurbished at Henley. There is only one brewhouse at Witney but two separate fermenting rooms for the separate Wychwood and Brakspear beers. The Brakspear beers are still brewed in Witney by Wychwood and not in Henley, where the original brewery site has been converted into a boutique hotel.
Hatherwood
Using the name Hatherwood Brewery, Wychwood brews beers exclusively for the UK supermarket Lidl. These include:
