A Northumberland brewery is giving away its supplies after being left with a surplus due to pubs being shuttered during the coronavirus pandemic.
Alnwick Brewery Company asked local residents to take home cask beer in their own containers, in exchange for making a donation to the NHS.
Brewery Manager Phil Bell said the scheme had to date raised nearly £1,000 for healthcare workers battling the Covid-19 crisis after giveaways at the brewery on two previous Fridays and its shop in Alnwick town centre today.
"We must have had 100 people through the door today," he told the Evening Standard.
"The amount of people who have been generously donating has been amazing.
"It's not a very affluent area in the first place and a lot of it has been hit, and hit hard, by the coronavirus outbreak.
"But everyone has been so generous... and we are so thankful to them."
The brewery, which now faces an uncertain future after seeing "95 per cent of its business disappear overnight" amid the Covid-19 crisis, has limited each person to taking away a maximum of five litres as supplies from the 72-pint casks dwindle.
But, stock permitting, it plans to keep the scheme going for at least two more Fridays.
Most of the beer being given away had been brewed in anticipation of high demand over Easter, but was left without anywhere to go after pubs were closed in line with an ongoing nationwide lockdown rolled out in late March.
"It was either pour it down the drain or pour it down the gullets of our local residents," Mr Bell said.
He added the initiative had put smiles on the faces of the brewery's staff and beer-lovers alike during an otherwise difficult moment for the local community, and country at large.
"It just gets funnier and funnier every time," Mr Bell said.
"Someone turned up today with a cereal box and another came with a jerry can; that was a new one.
"It gets people laughing and talking... and every little helps."
