Clarkson's British-only pub finds its spirit in a Suffolk field
The Farmer's Dog has served British beer, British wine and British gin since it opened, but rum has always been off the menu. Two Suffolk brothers have changed that.
Alkemy, the Bradfield-based distillery founded by brothers Rob and Will Tapster, has spent the past fortnight on the bar at Jeremy Clarkson's Cotswolds pub, The Farmer's Dog. It is a small entry on a menu, but a significant one: Alkemy is the first spirit of its kind to pass the pub's strict British-only sourcing rule, placing a very Suffolk drink in one of Britain's highest-profile venues.
The rule that kept rum off the bar
When Clarkson opened The Farmer's Dog in 2024, as documented on the Amazon Prime series Clarkson's Farm, he made one thing clear. "If it is not grown and reared in Britain, we are not selling it, and that is the end of it," he said at the time.
This ruled out Coca-Cola and coffee. It also ruled out rum. Traditional rum is made from molasses, a by-product of sugarcane, but sugarcane does not grow in the British climate. Several UK distilleries have opened in recent years, but all have had to import cane or cane molasses to produce a spirit that meets the legal definition of rum.
For a pub built around the argument that British agriculture deserves better, the absence was awkward but unavoidable.
A sugar beet solution
Alkemy's answer is to use sugar beet instead.
The Tapsters' molasses is sourced from East Anglian farms and distilled just outside Bury St Edmunds. The process is the same as traditional rum production, but the base ingredient is a crop grown in Suffolk fields rather than Caribbean plantations. The result is a spirit that behaves like rum, wins awards as rum, but technically is not rum at all.
Oliver Rouane-Williams
"Alkemy is made in the same way as rum, but by using sugar beet, we end up with a different flavour profile," co-founder Rob Tapster says. "This means that the spirit has less of the more challenging flavours that you would associate with rum, and as a result, does not have to have all the sugar added to make it drinkable. This makes the spirit more approachable, whilst keeping hold of the enjoyable part of rum."
That category-defying quality has won Alkemy Original gold at the Spirits Business Global Rum and Cachaca Masters, and silver at both the London Spirits Competition and the International Wine and Spirits Competition. It has also, on occasion, seen the distillery disqualified from rum categories on the basis of the label rather than the liquid.
How it reached the Cotswolds
Rob and Will approached The Farmer's Dog after watching Clarkson's Farm and realising that the pub's 100% British rule was an almost perfect fit for a spirit whose entire proposition is locally grown sugar.
It is the Alkemy Original variant on the bar, rather than the Spiced Gold launched in July last year. "The original has been stocked there for two weeks now," Rob says. "We have been speaking to them since the start of the year, but it has taken a long time to get all the paperwork sorted."
Celebrating sugar beet
For Rob, the interest is not only in the listing itself but in what it might do for public understanding of the crop behind the spirit. Sugar beet is a defining East Anglian crop, but rarely one that features in national conversations about British food.
"We really wanted to make a spirit that is synonymous with Suffolk and East Anglia," he says. "Sugar beet is a big part of agriculture in this part of the country and has a long history in the area. Locally grown sugar is supplied to the whole of the UK and needs to be celebrated more. We want Alkemy to be part of that. We have created a spirit that is unique to the area, and we are excited to tell as many people as possible about not only our spirit, but sugar beet in general, and places like The Farmer's Dog are really important for this."
Rob is supportive of Clarkson's broader campaign for British agriculture. "We think that what Jeremy and the team at the Farmer's Dog are doing is really important. It has made people ask a lot more questions about where some of their food actually comes from and how it is grown. There are a lot of positive things about agriculture in the UK, and I think we all agree that it could do with all the help that it can get."
It is a striking alignment for a distillery whose molasses travels just 35 miles from field to bottle.
The bottom line
A new drink on a single pub menu wouldn't normally warrant a feature, but Alkemy's arrival at The Farmer's Dog is a rare moment where a niche Suffolk product is introduced to a national audience on its own terms. For a self-funded distillery that has spent nearly a decade refining a spirit most of the industry said could not be made, it is validation of a bet placed on a local crop.
Alkemy is available in farm shops throughout Norfolk and Suffolk through D and F McCarthy's, and can also be purchased directly from the distillery.
Don't forget: If you enjoy our content, please add Ipswich.co.uk as a "preferred source" on Google so you can easily find more of the content you value.
This article cost us ~£27 to produce
It's free for you to read thanks to the generous support of our partners. Please support us by supporting them.
Below the line