With pubs shut indefinitely, one of the island’s breweries has had to adapt to save not only gallons of beers from being wasted, but also the livelihoods of its staff.

Bushy’s brewery, based in Santon, produced beer for more than 40 pubs and resturants in the island prior to coronavirus lockdown restrictions coming into place on March 22, writes Andy Dalrymple.

Like many brewers across the world, Martin Brunnschweiler was faced with a stockpile of ale with nowhere for it to be sold.

He explained: ’TT was called off on March 16 and the pubs were closed a week or so later and that really started alarm bells ringing as to how we were going to stay open.

’After the initial worry about what we would do, we’ve been able to get our beers into Shoprite, Ellan Vannin Fuels, Station Garage in Castletown and a couple of other shops.

’This, thankfully, has used up most of the TT stockpile which we had started to build up and we’ve even started to brew some fresh batches.

’We’ve gone from not knowing whether we were going to have to close and throw away beer to being able to stay open and keep all our workforce of four on.

’It’s a huge relief and we’re very grateful to the shops that have taken our beer.’

Bushy’s most popular brand, its Manx Bitter, as well as its Piston Brew are available across the island in milk-style, two-pint containers and are selling well.

Mr Brunnschweiler explained: ’I’d thought about using the containers before. I’ve used them in the pubs if people wanted a takeaway at the end of the night, but we’ve never managed to get anyone interested to take them in a retail way until now.

’It’s competively priced and the quality is second to none. Indeed it’s the only local beer that contains Manx-grown malted barley.’

The Bushy’s beer tent has been a cornerstone of the TT’s entertainment scene since 1998, originally at the Bottleneck car park before moving to the Villa Marina Gardens in 2018.

Mr Brunnschweiler has said luckily they hadn’t outlayed too much ahead of this year’s now-cancelled event.

’Normally we would be flat out now getting ready for TT after starting at the end of February, early March.

’We’d tentatively booked some stuff, but we hadn’t gone as far as to pay deposits. Mainly because we could see this thing coming.

’Also we went through something similar in 2001 with foot and mouth.

’On that occasion though, we went ahead and opened the tent after the government and police requested we do so to keep the visitors that did travel over away from the countryside and possibly spreading the disease. 

’I think roughly about 15,000 to 18,000 bikers still came over, but we still lost a lot of money that year and we were very wary of being caught out again.

’The government didn’t actually cancel the TT in 2001 until late April and we’d had a lot of beer brewed by then and there was quite a lot of waste.

’This year the decision was made earlier, which certainly helped us out.’

Mr Brunnschweiler has also praised the support he has had from the government, but was critical of the insurance industry who he believes aren’t honouring policies that he and others in the industry have taken out for situations such as this.

’Government assistance has been a godsend and I don’t think we would have been quite able to stay open without it.

’Everyone who was affected by the TT’s cancellation could apply for £3,000 which we did and we’ve also applied for the wage support scheme.

’As our sales are creeping up, fingers crossed, there could come a stage where we could be weaned off this help.

’With luck the shops and the supermarkets will continue to stock us even when the pubs reopen.’

On the issue of insurance, Mr Brunnschweiler added: ’I’m very disappointed with the insurance industry. Certainly in our trade, we’ve been told by our insurers that although our policy seems to cover business interruption they won’t be covering this.’

’My understanding is that they’ve said if they had to pay out everyone then the insurance industry would go bust.

’My view on that is the insurance companies need to be going to government and getting loans or whatever so they can honour the policies that have been taken out.

’We’ve diligently paid our policies and now I feel like they’ve been taking money under false pretences if they are now not willing to pay out.’