Brewers Journal Podcast

Next weekend marks the inaugural These Hills, an intimate, carefully curated two day beer festival taking place in the town of Lewes in the South Downs National Park on the 24 and 25 June. Organised by Beak Brewery, the event features beers from breweries such as Deya, Cloudwater, Queuzerie Tilquin, Kløster, Forest and Main, The Kernel, Wildflower and many more besides. And it has been a whirlwind few years for the team at Beak Brewery. They’ve expanded, produced a wealth of excellent beers and collaborated with outfits far and wide. So what better opportunity to look back at our conversation with founder Danny Tapper and head brewer Robin Head-Fourman earlier last year. In this episode, originally recorded in February 2021, we discuss how opening a brewery during a pandemic is far from ideal. But if you have faith in the beer you brew, engage with the industry and embrace the community around you then you’ll be on the right path. And that’s exactly the approach Beak Brewery of Lewes has taken.

When you’ve spent some 25 years in beer industry, working with a raft of innovative companies, you’ve probably picked up a thing or two along the way. And for today’s guest, that time in beer and hospitality is and was always about the people. In today’s episode we hear from Christian Barden, an experienced and enthusiastic global beer industry leader whose mantra is “doing well by doing good”. He’s held executive positions at AB InBev, where he spent 15 years, and a range of drinks and hospitality related PLC’s and SME’s. Most recently, he started Kegstar in Europe, grew and lead it across three continents as global CEO and now holds a number of advisory roles across the industry. And speaking at our Brewers Lectures in Birmingham in May, Christian says that those 25 years in beer and hospitality were as much 25 years of four Ps – purpose, people, planet and profit. 

“Brewing beer is easy, but producing good beer takes real skill,” John Taylor, co-founder of London’s Drop Project Brewing Co once told us. With a series of successful and ambitious expansion projects under his belt, John more commonly known as JT, is now the co-founder of Mitcham-based Drop Project. Along with co-founders Joe Simo (right) and Will Skipsey (middle), the brewery is making waves with excellent lagers and IPAs as well as brilliant sours and stouts. JT has a wealth of experience when it comes to growing breweries so that’s why we invited him to speak at our Brewers Lectures in Birmingham earlier this week. In his talk, presented as this week’s podcast, JT says you should always consider consulting your peers before turning to consultants, to pay attention to contracts when working with fellow businesses and to never try and grow your way out of a problem.  

Earlier this week, figures from across the brewing industry descended upon Minneapolis for the latest iteration of the Craft Brewers Conference and the 2022 World Beer Cup Awards. And closer to home, breweries in the UK and across Europe are making absolutely incredible beer. That comes as no surprise. The consumer has simply never had it better when it comes to the sheer variety of styles available to them. And access to excellent US beer, both in trade and direct to consumer, is improving all of the time, too. In recent years a number of beer fans have turned their hands to bringing over fresh beer from breweries that otherwise might not graced these shores. And one such individual is Andrew McPhillips, the founder of Beers of America. In this episode, he tells us about why he started the business, the styles that most resonate with customers and why US beers continue to remain popular with fans in the UK and further afield.

Founded in 2020 but a long time in the making, Sureshot was born out of lockdown. The Manchester-based business, headed up by a brewer that can make leading hop-forward beers in his sleep, is determined to make its mark with an excellent, high-quality product. And a mere four months on since their first brew, they’re doing just that. 

During one their first dates, enjoying pints of mild, a couple while away the evening in one of the UK’s most fashionable cities. But no, we’re not talking about 2022. Instead this is Liverpool in the late 1980s…. And although they were both working in hospitality back then, little did Julie and Les O’ Grady know that some 30 years on, they’d be running a different hospitality business of their own. For Julie and they’d meet at Dunny’s Sports & Social Club. They’d get married, and have two children, Les would run a successful aquatics company while Julie had a decorated career in the NHS. But after Les decide to call time on that venture, he’d hang up his fishing net and pick up his mash paddle, with Julie joining full time several years later.   And only last weekend Neptune Brewery, the business they co-founded, celebrated its 7th birthday. It’s a business that has grown and expanded since starting out in 2015, and one that looks set for its biggest year yet in 2022.

With the sunshine we head to California and learn that brewing, like any other profession, can take us on a journey we might not have planned for. When Dylan Mobley (pictured far right) left his role at Stone Brewing in Escondido, California, to improve his work/life balance, he already had his next role mapped out. Instead, he’d spend the best part of the next five years helping create and refine some of the most revered and sought after beers in the modern US scene at Bottle Logic Brewing. But now, the California native is focused on his new venture at Rad Beer Co. Due to open this spring, Rad Beer Co is a a brewery and tasting room concept that will allow Mobley to brew a range of lagers and clean German Pilsners that complement the team’s Rad Brat food offering. In this podcast, we speak to Mobley about his exciting plans for Rad Beer Co. We look back at his career to learn more about how he grew as a brewer during his four years at Bottle Logic Brewing. We discuss the level of quality control required when brewing and packaging the array of Bourbon Barrel-Aged Stouts that remain so sought after across the globe, and also the on-going popularity of hop-forward hazy Pale Ales and IPAs.

Life has a funny way of working out, even if you weren’t sure what you were looking for in the first place. For Miranda Hudson and her co-founder and husband Bates, a chance encounter at a wedding a decade ago would eventually lead them to up sticks, start a new life in the country and open Duration Brewing – a farmhouse brewery making beers that belong. Duration Brewing secured planning consent to put their brewery on a scheduled monument site in a grade II* building back in September 2017. Early on, they worked with partners such Manchester’s Cloudwater and Oslo’s Amundsen to produce beers nomadically. That’s in addition to an array of collaborations with UK breweries including Deya, Verdant and Burning Sky. But fast-forward and the Norfolk brewery would cap a successful 2021 with a sleuth of awards. This included being recognised with two of the highest accolades in UK Brewing as Best New Brewery and Best New Beer for flagship American Pale Turtles All The Way Down at our own Brewers Choice Awards. Collecting those awards marked the start of a busy few days for the Duration duo with co-founder Bates stepping away from the brew kit to deliver one of the opening talks at our annual Brewers Congress. A rare public speaker, Bates gave an impassioned and rousing talk on how in building the business he has worked in structures and processes to make beers that belong with a deep respect of their impact. As well as discussing circular waste practices he also talked of his ambition to not grow exponentially and perhaps instead do less with more to stay creative while also putting mechanisms in place to allow for owner-operators with staff equity. And we’re sharing that very talk as this week’s Brewers Journal Podcast… Download Bates’ accompanying presentation hereDownload

Most breweries will, hopefully, experience a growth curve during their business lives. But when you’re on that particular journey, it’s key to recognise that there’s more to it than just increasing capacity and your ability to produce more volume. And as someone heading up a brew team, Aaron McClure knows that all too well. Aaron is the head brewer at Sharp’s, based in Rock, Cornwall. After studying biology at the University of Exeter, Aaron would join Sharp’s in 2011, rising up the ranks from brewing team member to technical brewer before being promoted to the role of head brewer in 2019. Managing a team of 32 brewers, McClure is responsible for the production of a raft of beers including Atlantic, Offshore Pilsner and Doom Bar, which they brew in excess of one million pints of each week. In this latest episode, recorded at our Brewers Congress in December, Aaron explains how he goes about managing all of his different responsibilities at the Cornish brewery. During his time at Sharp’s, he has seen the brewery and the team grow. On the outside, he says, it’s sometimes easy to just look at a larger number of tanks or your ability to make more beer. But there’s more to it, much more. Whether that means HR policies and practices, quality controls and health and safety measures, you also need to make sure each and every part of your team feels valued and involved.

What happens when you combine a couple that have a love for travel, a passion for brewing excellent beers and the desire to create an inclusive brewery that boasts a taproom loved by locals and visitors alike? Reading’s own Double-Barrelled, of course! Having just celebrated that important third birthday, nominated for new brewery of the year at our Brewers Choice Awards, and with a capacity expansion under its belt already in 2022, the brewery is only looking one way – and that’s forward. In this podcast, we speak to brewery co-founders Luci and Mike Clayton-Jones about the origins of Double-Barrelled, striving for continuous improvement, the importance of inclusivity and the role the taproom plays in the community.