Titanic Brewery

Founded in Burslem in October 1985 — John Pazio, landlord of the Travellers Rest, started it; brothers Keith and Dave Bott bought in with family money and have run it ever since — Titanic has grown into the Potteries' standard-bearer for independent beer without leaving family hands: Companies House still shows the Botts holding the shares. The scale is honest and disclosed — nine pubs and eight Bod café-bars across Staffordshire and its borders, three to four million pints a year — but the heart is the Callender Place brewery and its weekday shop. Plum Porter is the famous one, and in 2026 it took silver in CAMRA's Champion Beer of Britain speciality class, one of a clutch of SIBA medals the same year. Keith Bott was appointed MBE in 2017 for services to brewing; he had twice chaired the society of independent brewers, which tells you where the loyalties lie.