Just over 3 hours from my home in Berkshire and roughly 4 hours from Joanne’s house in Kent sits the UK’s first beer spa, situated in Coltishall, Norwich. The 2 dedicated private beer spa rooms at Norfolk Mead opened their doors in July 2024 where I then discovered them via online press release not long after during my investigations into alternatives to Budapest that were closer to home. Rik and I nearly made the 300+ mile round trip journey as a treat for my birthday weekend a few months back, but bailed partially due to pain points with booking that I’ll touch upon as part of my overall feedback. Just as quickly as I had made peace with the idea that I’d realistically be more likely to make the sub 3 hour flight to Budapest long before I’d travel over 3 hours just beyond Norwich, we cut to Joanne’s Christmas present….
Unfortunately for Gordon, but very fortunately for me, he had purchased the £68pp experience for the two of them but was unable to go. This allowed me, waiting in the wings, to swoop in and save the day by volunteering as tribute to attend his half of the 2-person session. Deciding on a January timeline to allow things to settle and help shake the post-holiday blues, this was a burden I was fully ready to step up and take on.
Below, I will give you a rundown of my personal experience alongside any tips worth sharing and whether or not I’d recommend it for the beer lover in your life. Before venturing further, I want to be clear that we were in no way gaining anything in exchange for this post – including any compensations or sponsorship. It’s all my personal experience and opinion based on a paid for service. All prices/ameneties mentioned are as per January 2025.
Caution – Wordier Breakdown below.
Depending on your budget and travel distance, your options for accommodation will vary. For the purposes of this post, the only main criteria we had was that it be within easy walking distance to the spa (up to 20 minutes ideally), have separate bed/sleeping spaces for us each, and a private en suite bathroom. And though this trip would only cost me fuel, accommodation, and a mere 83 easter eggs for Gordon (egg-size not specified), I ideally wanted to stay as frugal as possible.
If there is one in your group that won’t be drinking and/or you live within a commutable distance that you could hire a cab, the easiest option would be to make it a day trip only. It’s important for me to highlight here PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY – DO NOT DRINK AND DRIVE.
For those of you in similar situations to me and Jo where this is not possible, there is a pricier option to stay at the venue itself. With 16 rooms, the lowest starts at £145 but does sleep 2 with a private en suite, tea/coffee making facilities, and includes breakfast. From what I can see, the more expensive end of the spectrum are the suites including those located in their own summer houses, looking more like a mini flat, with pull out sofas enough to accommodate up to 4 appear to be £245 and still breakfast inclusive. They look quite bright and relaxing, and I feel it would be good value for money if you were planning a more special weekend away (such as an anniversary or quiet birthday weekend). I’m hoping to get to try this out with Rik some day in the future as well as wider use of the spa itself and can then report back on that side of the experience, but you can view a full list of the rooms on offer for yourself here.
While there were no hotels or private rentals I could find outside outside of the venue itself within the immediate vicinity of Coltishall, I was able to find a few options in a 10 minute or less drive away in the area of Hoveton and Wroxham, but the walking times were over an hour, which would not be suitable given our earliest arrival ETA paired with the booking times available for the experience itself. I did notice a plethora of pubs with rooms to rent dotted about on the map within a 30-minute walk radius, however, which can offer a novel experience for the traveller – especially those not native to the UK.
Due to availability, Jo and I booked into The Rising Sun Colitshall and King’s Head Coltishall respectively, which were situated adjacent to each other in a shared car park, only a 12 minute walk from the spa itself. I’ll make a shorter companion piece about these 2 locations separately in future, but I can confidently confirm that you can’t go wrong with either as a bed for the night.
The experience itself lasts 45-minutes in total and was booked in for a 1PM slot, which was the latest availability they had for the day when we booked a few weeks out. We arrived a bit early, so we were asked to take a seat in the coffee lounge where somebody would come find us once the bath was ready. I had a quick look at the menu, and there was an array of pastries and savoury options for brunch as well as sandwiches, sides, and cakes for “snacks” – all, in my opinion, seemingly reasonably priced (though I can’t comment on the size) and had a note saying they could be adapted for those with dietary requirements upon request. To give you a flavour of the flavours on offer, the cheapest item was one of the seasonal cake slices or the scone with cream & jam for £3.75 on the “snack” menu with the more expensive option being £12 for one of several quintessentially British sandwiches. There were also cocktails starting at £6.50 for a mimosa and ranging up to an espresso Martini for £10. While I imagine that may sound steep depending on where you live, I want to add for context that it looks like local “Norfolk Mead” Vodka is used in several of them. There were also several mocktails for £6 and under on the menu as well as juices, and smoothies for less than £5. I tried none of these nor anything from their other main dining areas on this visit as we had one mission and one mission alone – beer.
My expectation based on the initial photo shown on their main beer spa webpage is that there would be two smaller sized tubs with an individual tap at the side of each. To caveat, I didn’t look further through the gallery or do much deeper research beyond that. Because of this, I was mildly confused when we arrived in the room to only 1 filled tub before quickly realising the tubs were bigger than I expected and so could fit 2 people comfortably in each. Upon going back to the website, you can read through the “What to expect” page where it outlines that each room can accommodate up to 8 people. While I can see how you might fit 4 people in each tub, I would like to advise that this could potentially be misleading on how big the tubs are (TL;DR, similarly to when they say smaller, inflatable hot tubs fit 2-4 people, if you strongly value your personal space, maybe err on the side of caution and plan for 2 per tub and be pleasantly surprised at the spaciousness).
Once inside the private room, we were given a quick briefing that lasted a few minutes before we were able to start our dip. My only nitpick was around the fact that the staff who give the rundown potentially aren’t as knowledgeable about beer or the brewing process, so there were some minor level misleading points with some of what was said alongside some general vagueness. While this isn’t massively important to the overall experience, it is something that the beer nerds would have spotted if we are looking at it from this perspective and I believe there would have been some benefit in either giving staff more knowledge to share on this front or more knowledge to share around the benefits of key beer ingredients to your health and wellness. It was kept to a high enough level that it arguably wasn’t required and contributed to making the experience feel a little bit more gimmicky than I had maybe optimistically hoped for. I do want to say that the member of staff doing our briefing was absolutely lovely and this isn’t a failure on her part, nor necessarily a “failure” at all. When the briefing was over, we changed into swimsuits and slipped in for our soak.
DO NOT BE MISLED BY THE NAME – this is not a hot tub filled with beer, rather a tub filled with hot water and some ingredients found in the production of beer. We were given 3 individual piles – 1 x malt, 1 x ground T-90 hop pellets, and 1 x sea salt crystals that I’d guess were Himalayan due to the colour – each meticulously presented on a singular rectangle shaped plate for us to share. During the brief briefing at the start, we were advised to sprinkle these ingredients in as we soaked. My particular favourite in terms of the aroma – which we talk about further on a podcast recording – was the malt because it left my favourite aromas behind that you’d pick up on a brew day when mashing in. After asking us if we were beer drinkers or if we’d like something else to drink, something in addition, or even some lemonade to make a shandy or several, we had been told to help ourselves to as much beer from the tap as we’d like (she emphasised emphatically around this point with a “seriously…as much as you want”). Don’t worry my dude, we sure were going to try.
The goal for us in terms of this experience was to relax and catch up first and foremost, but to also view it from the lens of a beer hobbyist in an attempt to try to quantify if it delivers value for money for that audience. Part of this is down to the beer available and how much you can realistically consume (responsibly) within that 45-minute window. We were both aligned on aiming to drink as much as we could reasonably drink without increasing our normal drinking pace by much. The beer on offer was the British Lager from Woodforde Brewery – a brewery that gives off “trad vibes” that I hadn’t personally tried before. As you’d expect from many lagers, it was enjoyable in taste, but there was a gassiness that made it particularly challenging to drink at any real speed (especially when paired with the heat from the tub). The only element that gave us an arguably unnecessary challenge was that the beer tap was positioned to face one side of the tub as opposed to having it face the middle. This meant that one of us was on easy mode for pouring and one of us (me) was on slightly harder mode. I’d be curious as to why this positioning was decided upon – if it was a design choice or due to a technical requirement.
In total I think we managed 3 tankards worth of beer (maybe a slight bit more), but I would attribute at least ½ of one serving if not more solely down to the fact that I kept taking gulps within the last 5-10 minutes and refilling quickly. Before we left the room as well, we were told we could fill up right to the brim once more and enjoy the remains back in the coffee lounge area where we began our journey. It all came quite full circle.
Upon reflection across the last week, I would say the overall experience was positive but I am not fully confident in saying it’s something worth travelling to from much further afield than we did unless you were going to be within this area for other reasons. That being said, I definitely am interested to go back under a slightly different setting to try this again alongside other amenities the spa has to offer as I missed out on the whole package this time around.
In some ways, I can’t help but honestly feel it was a bit on the gimmicky side compared to what it could have been in my mind. As mentioned, if they had committed a bit more to leaning in on either the beer side or the health & wellness side as far as the beer was involved, it might have elevated the experience a bit further. Given it was a stand alone experience separate from the rest of the spa and treatments you could pay for, it felt like it had a lot of potential but lacked slightly – though, in what, I can’t really put my finger on it. I couldn’t strongly state that value for money isn’t offered, but when the price of entry at the weekend to the beer spa in Budapest is 24000 HUF/pp (just under £50pp), making it just under £20 cheaper, I struggle to find specific areas I can point to that drive the value here in the UK. Given you realistically can only consume so much beer within a 45-minute window which includes changing time, it’s hard to even point to the “all you can drink” model as a win in itself.
I will say that I do think it’s achievable to drink closer to 4 beers relatively easily without chugging if you were there with less distractions or somebody that you see more frequently. Due to the distance between us, irrespective of talking regularly via text and podcast recordings, Jo and I had a million things to excitedly catch up on with such a small window to do so when we also include trying to record little bits and bobs along the way too.
As I will readily admit, the beer spas of Budapest have long since been added to my travel bucket list but not something I have managed to tick off yet, so not something I can personally make a comparison to at this point in time. I do, however, feel comfortable enough to say that looking at the photos from the baths in Budapest, there is a recognisable resemblance but with a bit more privacy and space offered at Norfolk Mead. From the research I’ve done thus far on Budapest, it feels that experience may offer something a bit more commonplace and borderline “rough & ready” in comparison – which is arguably more to my personal preference – while I believe those in Norfolk may potentially offer something a bit more elevated and to a British palate. In doing preliminary research around the costings, I think I have sold myself already on the trip to Budapest and can hopefully give you a further report around how authentic those in the UK are by first hand experience.
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I would personally recommend to those living within an hour drive that enjoy a spa trip and/or want a more unique gift for the beer lover in their life for a special occasion. Given its price point and location, it would be something that I personally couldn’t justify doing on a regular basis, but I would consider it a good present for a milestone birthday, anniversary, or similar occasion.
It’s also worth noting that when you book, the price is per person but you will be charged for a minimum of 2 people, so not something necessarily suitable to do alone (though imagine you could fit at least one extra beer in if you did fly solo).
Another key suggestion would be to book your accommodation first, especially if you’re booking with a month’s notice give or take, because the locations are less than plentiful within a walkable distance. The more space you need and the more you want to be located in the same place as a friend who you may not be directly sharing a room with, the more consideration needs to be made. Despite expecting a quieter mid-month booking, it was surprisingly challenging to find a location to accommodate us based on our criteria within the same building and we were lucky enough to find two pubs situated adjacent with nearly identical offerings on room and price.
Having a tap at the ready and the smell of a mash tub spiraling through the room as well as getting to say you put a whole handful of hops into the water with you makes this somewhat unique offering a bit more exciting than your average day out at the spa. Though edging on a bit gimmick-y, if you can’t travel abroad to Budapest, this will scratch the itch in my opinion. My summarised feelings across the board are as follows:
Highs
Lows/Areas of Improvement
As highlighted already, it’s not miles above similar experiences located abroad RE price points, but does bring an elevated feel to it to justify the additional cost. While we had a positive experience overall, the beer tap is the only element I think would be noticeable and missed from spending a similar amount of money at a spa closer to home.
To caveat, take my rating with a pinch of Himalayan bath salt as I didn’t get to really explore the area beyond my accommodation and the beer spa. I got to this rating by looking at all the people I knew that were spread out across England and none were less than a 3 hour drive away. Where it’s tucked away, it makes it harder to get to just for a day out, especially given it involves drinking. That combined with the lack of close accommodations aren’t the best mix (though it is what helps keep the area looking lovely and quaint). It looks like there was some lovely bits of nature if you were going to make a day out of it and the Norfolk Mead Hotel itself does offer things like boat rentals, so would help justify a longer stay. I saw a few nice shops and coffee shops as well in the immediate vicinity that you could walk to, but I think it may be more challenging to make the trek worthwhile if you needed to keep things on the cheaper side.
Highs and Lows as well as general sentiments are already captured extensively above. All the staff we interacted with were lovely and the beer was quite quaffable. We had a great time catching up in the peaceful setting. The only thing keeping it from a 5 for me is that it could’ve leaned in a bit more into the beer aspect, so didn’t feel quite as unique and worth the trek as it might have been otherwise. If you’re just looking for a lovely spa in a beautiful setting with some great pubs close by, however, it’s certainly a 5 star.
Norfolk Mead Hotel & Spa – Main Website
A Woman’s Brew Recording About the Beer Spa Experience
Reach out to me at adventuresinhoptimism@gmail.com if you want to discuss my experience any further or ask any additional questions not covered above!