A SUFFOLK brewery is raising a glass to the past and toasting the future after upping sticks and moving north.

Cliff Quay Brewery, which has been brewing at the historic former Tolly Cobbold brewery in Ipswich since 2009, has moved its operation to a new location 15 miles away.

The producers of Classic Bitter, Sea Dog and Tolly Roger beers officially open the new site today at Meadow Works, Kenton Road, Debenham.

Head brewer and director Jeremy Moss called it an exciting move which will enable it to expand production in a building more suitable for its needs. “This is a new chapter in the history of Cliff Quay Brewery, and although we are sad to leave the Tolly site, we knew that we would have to leave at some point,” said Mr Moss, former head brewer at Wychwood in Oxfordshire.

“It was becoming obvious that the old loading bay we were located in, which was not part of the Victorian brewery, was coming to the end of its natural life.”

The brewery’s connection with the Tolly Cobbold site, adjacent to the Brewery Tap pub, may be revived as part of a �30 million proposal to redevelop the area with a hotel, flats, gym and supermarket.

The listed building was home to the Tolly Cobbold brewery from 1723 until 2002. Cliff Quay Brewery, which began production at the site in February 2009, is owned by Earl Soham brewery but run as a separate brewery by Mr Moss.

Mr Moss said the company has been in discussions with the owners of the site, Cliff Quay Developments Ltd, about the possibility of setting up a “nano brewery” within the original Victorian building. “We have been talking with Cliff Quay Developments about retaining brewing on the Cliff Quay site which would run within the Victorian brewery buildings supplying the Brewery Tap and a small number of local free houses,” he said.

Production stopped at the old Tolly Cobbold earlier this year and has since been mostly transferred to Earl Soham.