A leading independent brewer has partnered with a student run microbrewery to produce 500 casks of the students’ popular stout for this year’s Wetherspoon Spring Beer Festival.

Stu Brew - Europe’s first student-led brewery, based at Newcastle University – travelled to St Austell Brewery’s headquarters in Cornwall in February to scale up production of Exam Room Tears (5.5% ABV), its rich maple and pecan stout that has become a firm favourite in the North East.

The collaboration was sparked by Stu Brew’s long-standing presence in the Students’ Union-run Wetherspoons on campus, where it operates a permanent keg line and frequently supplies guest cask lines. After Wetherspoons invited the student brewery to take part in its national festival, it requested 500 casks of Exam Room Tears - a volume that would have taken Stu Brew more than a year to produce on its own brewing kit.

To help meet demand, Dr Chris O’Malley, Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering and Head Brewer at Stu Brew, approached St Austell Brewery’s Head Brewer, Georgina Young, after previously meeting her while judging together for the British Guild of Beer Writers. St Austell Brewery stepped in to support the students, hosting them at its historic Victorian brewery in Cornwall where its iconic beers including Tribute and Proper Job are brewed.

Georgina Young, Head Brewer at St Austell Brewery, said:

“Working with the Stu Brew team was a great experience. Exam Room Tears is a fantastic cask beer and helping them bring it to festival scale felt like a brilliant way to support the next generation of brewers.”

In addition to brewing the stout, Stu Brew made the most of their visit by creating a brown ale on St Austell Brewery’s small-batch kit ‘just for fun’.

For students Kypros Lakovou and Will Tyson, who travelled down with Dr O’Malley, the trip marked their first-ever visit to St Austell Brewery - and to Cornwall itself.

Will said:

“Every brewery is unique, but St Austell really stood out - it was this maze of history, with different layers of the site built up over generations. You could see the heritage all around you while still watching a modern brewery in action. It was a special environment to learn in, and really interesting to see how different brewing on a much larger scale was.”

Exam Room Tears is available in Wetherspoons nationally across the beer festival, which takes place between March 4th-15th.