A Grantham brewery has launched a special ale to mark tomorrow's VE Day celebrations.

Zest Brewery has brewed a blond beer called 'Blond Bombshell' in honour of the Blond Bombshell campaign to recruit women to join the war effort.

And to further appreciates the efforts of the armed forces, its members can receive a ten per cent discount from the brewery.

The move follows Zest owner Kathy Britton suffering her toughest time in more than 20 years in the brewing trade.

Kathy started Oldershaw's Brewery in 1996 and relaunched as Zest at the end of last year, with a mobile bar adding to her beers.

She told Grantham Nub News: "With the pubs closing and our events arm Bar Zest having been decimated literally overnight, we have had to turn on a sixpence and adapt our offering to survive the current challenges.

"We first tried to look after the pubs as far as we could by collecting up all the unsold beer and offering them a full refund.

"We also obviously wanted to look after their (and therefore ours too) customers by bringing the pub drinks to you so we set up a contactless delivery service free to a 20 mile radius of Grantham."

"As well as our full range of bottles and cans we are doing 5 litre minicasks of the Blond Bombshell, Atomic IPA, Heavenly Blonde and Newton's Drop, all at £20. We are also offering other drinks wine, prosecco, and ciders."

While the government is expected to announce some kind of easing of lockdown this weekend, for the hospitality trade, the wait could be months longer, leaving brewers like Kathy increasingly turning to online sales.

Kathy continued: "Business will remain difficult for a long time to come and we're trying to support the pubs as much as we can. But with many still having to pay rates and rents on closed businesses, we know some will sadly be forced to close permanently, which will be an incredible loss to the business sector, locals to many of whom it provides a fantastic support network but of our great British institution 'the pub'.

"We obviously don't know when the pubs will re-open but they won't be in the same format as before for a long time to come, so our beer sales to pubs will be way down in cask terms; but we are trying to stay positive, hoping for their survival and we will be continuing our local delivery service and we hope to be able to offer our mobile bar service again as and when larger scale events are opened back up again."

In the meantime, Zest will be offering Mosaic Blonde as a 4.3% blonde brew later this month, which is described as 'a lovely fruity beer.'

Kathy added: "We are thrilled with the support we've received from our lovely loyal local customers."

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