Sustainability profile Focusing on the pioneering work of Duration Brewing in rural Norfolk

Beers that belong

S USTAINABILIT Y IN BREWING

image Simon James

Duration is not a name that was chosen lightly by Miranda Hudson and her partner Derek Bates (known just as ‘Bates’) when they founded their farmhouse brewery in rural Norfolk in 2019. The dilapidated barn in which Duration is housed had already stood on West Acre farm for centuries and is officially a scheduled monument, needing sign off from the Secretary State before works could commence. Working with archeologists, and compliance with seven separate authorities to get building consent for the historic listed site, this was a project to create a business for the long-term that is very much a part of the land and the community it sits within. Bates, originally from South Carolina, sought out a location with a similar pace of life in Norfolk, where agriculture is the dominant industry and the ingredients needed for the brewing process are close at hand. Sustainability was crucial from the beginning, with no mains water or drainage in place and a ban on any significant excavation at the site, a huge initial investment had to be made in an innovative water treatment system that purifies effluent sufficiently to be returned to the protected chalk rivers nearby. By-products such as spent grain, yeast and hops are removed first from the effluent and distributed to local farmers and other producers for onward use, and grey water is re-used in the brewhouse for cleaning. As Bates puts it, the whole ethos behind Duration is to ‘leave a legacy, while leaving no trace’, and this is a brewery that not only nurtures, protects and champions the rural environment in which it sits but may well endure beyond this generation to that of the couple’s young daughter. Independent Brewer’s Editor, Caroline Nodder, caught up with Miranda and Bates in mid-January to learn more about this monumental build and the sustainable ethos that underpins it…

Business Basics

Name: Duration Founded: 2018 (as a gypsy brewer) 2019 (first brew on permanent site)

Location:

Abbey Farm, West Acre, Norfolk

Owners:

Miranda Hudson and Derek Bates (known as ‘Bates’) Annual production: 2,300hl Brewing team: 3 people Staff: 8 people (full time) Core beers: Turtles All The Way Down (American Pale 5.5% ABV), Dripping Pitch (West Coast IPA 6.7% ABV), Bet The Farm (Continental Pale 4.5% ABV) and Doses (Pilsner 5.1% ABV)

Production split (cask, keg

& small pack): 70% keg, 30% small pack (pre-pandemic) 50% keg, 50% small pack (during pandemic)

How did you come to launch Duration and how has the business developed since then?

Miranda: “We always knew we were looking for a farmhouse brewery, so we wanted to be on a farm, and Norfolk grows some of the best barley in the world. So we began looking out here, and in Bristol, both being a couple of hours from where we were based in London. We met with the West Acre estate, and they're very progressive thinking as a landowner and agricultural farmer. They're part of a rewilding project that's going on across Norfolk and Suffolk. And they were really interested to develop a dilapidated old barn that they had in their portfolio of buildings that really wasn't doing anything. And around us they've also developed a really nice artisanal community - a picture framer, a canoe maker, a coffee roaster, and an art gallery. They're thinking about how they can bring life back into a very small rural area through more sustainable businesses that bring skills and develop the area in a way that is more sustainable.”

Why did the idea of a farmhouse brewery particularly appeal to you?

Miranda: “It was mostly for the beer. Because there's cask beer, there's very fresh beer, there's German lagers and pilsners. But yeastforward beers and mixed fermentation beers. I mean, they’re a lot more established in that realm in the States, but in the UK it's like the final frontier of beer that's yet to be explored. So we wanted to make beers that reflect the land but also use local cultures in them.”

Bates: “It’s also a hell of a lot cheaper for a lot more square footage in the sticks than it is in the city!”

Miranda: “Bates is from upstate South Carolina, where it's actually really similar to Norfolk in that life can be a bit more leisurely, but people work with their hands and inherit skills from the generation above them. And there is a real appreciation of locally-made produce, and enjoying just being in the landscape a lot more.”

What is the ethos behind the business?

Miranda: “The first thing that we fell in love with was this huge stone barn and the conundrum was how to turn it into a working brewery when there was no power here, there was no water here. It was just pretty much a relic stood on a hill. We had to really think about how we were going to build the brewery. We had to imagine where we wanted to get to and how big we wanted to grow, who we imagined drinking our beers, what styles, in order to install the business in the right way. We ended up bringing in a substation to put our power on, and we're actually talking with West Acre estate right now because they want to develop greener electricity and greener power for us, and for some of their other tenants as well. We also didn't have the benefit of going into mains drainage here. But our water source is supplied by two local rivers nearby, so we had to build our own water treatment plant to manage all of our effluent waste, so that we could put it back into this landscape that we had fallen in love with. Because of where we were, and because of the protections on the bit of land that we wanted to develop the brewery on, we had to think in a very self-sufficient way.

And that's informed our whole way of being. If you always set your goal to put back more than you take from where you are, then you're always going to think conscientiously about where you are. So because we can't go into a mains drain, we have to clean our water. And we have to put it back into this protected chalk river. So we ended up separating our grain and separating our hops and separating our yeast and not letting it go down the drain. We then give it to producers nearby that see value in it. Whether that's a Wagyu beef smallholding farmer, or a blueberry grower that needs to take some of the alkalinity out of their soil and make it a little bit more acidic. Our hops work well for that, and our grain works well for the Wagyu herd. And we also think that way, actually, on the products we use within our beers. We think about who's around here that has produce that might be really nice in a grisette, and we think about vintners, after they have done their first pressings, there's some lovely flavourful produce that's just going to go to waste. If we can use that in a beer and we get the flavour from that, then that's also less wasteful. It's frugality really and necessity that have helped us have this mindset - to do more with less.”

It's frugality really and necessity that have helped us have this mindset - to do more with less.

Continued on page 25

We took an approach of, build it once and build it right.

It has been challenging, but to us, it's worth it, because we want to be on this planet in the right way.

The system you installed to treat your water is quite unusual, not a reed bed system you see at many breweries?

Bates: “A reed bed is enormously expensive, both to put in and upkeep and we also can't dig, so we can't dig out a 100m by 50m reed bed when we can barely do work on the building itself. We have to bring in an archaeologist and everything.” Miranda: “We have bats, voles, owls, cultural and historical remains - the sort of red tape that you think of when you think of Stonehenge or the Houses of Parliament applies to us because we're a scheduled monument. There are 134 scheduled monuments across the UK that have been deemed valuable to the nation. So for everything big we do, we have to apply to the Secretary of State. And we have about seven governing bodies that deal with Grade II and Grade I listed buildings. So certain things weren't available to us and we have had to look for new technologies.” Bates: “[The water treatment system] is a membrane bioreactor. It's not new technology. People like Thames Water and lots of other municipalities have been using membrane bioreactors for a couple of decades now. All it is, is a pH settling, where we adjust that. And then we take it over to a bio tank, which is just like a large enzymatic stomach. So it breaks down any organic matter. And it goes, finally, to a membrane tank, which is a nano filtration. So takes out any last bits and articles and everything like that. And then it goes to the soak way. We do all the requisite tests every day. And then every week we test ammonia, pH, oxygen levels, and then once a month, we send it off to an independent lab, just because they can do much more in-depth stuff than we can on a day-to-day basis. It just makes sure we're in line with what we should be.”

How do you balance the investment you make in ‘green’ projects with the return you get?

Miranda: “We have got a huge capital investment in this project. Both in the brewing equipment we put in, but also in these ancillaries. But when we built this company, we wanted it to be a little bit more unique in being a farmhouse brewery, because we felt like that area hadn't been explored as much in the UK. And we are parents, and we wanted this to be our life’s work. So we thought it's worth it, because this is what's going to occupy our days for hopefully the rest of our working careers. We took an approach of, build it once and build it right. So the water treatment plant was a huge plug in that probably could have paid for another small brewery somewhere else. And it has been difficult with an inconsistent landscape for the last 18 months, it has been challenging.

But also, you're looking at sustainability. Now governments are as well. So there are lots of grants around and if you are committing yourself to those goals, then I think more and more we'll see that you'll get rewarded for striving for those goals. We've really been fortunate in the last year and a half in that we've been awarded three different grants on top of the furlough scheme and the other sort benefits that have been about. So, yeah, it has been challenging, but to us, it's worth it, because we want to be on this planet in the right way.”

What other areas of your business have you adapted to become more sustainable?

Miranda: “We try not to use one way kegs, I know, for festivals and things that they're kind of the only option, and they do look after the beer well. But we use steel kegs.” Bates: “Basically looking at the processes, we try to be as sustainable as we can with how far things have to move. Even raw ingredients. All of our malt comes from about seven miles away, and it's grown on this farm. Unfortunately, hops aren't quite at that level yet. But we are working with Hukins and Brookhouse, and hopefully over the next few years, we'll see some more exciting hops grown on the UK. And then efficiencies on equipment, we are constantly looking to spend less and looking at power usage or outputs. The farm here is looking at doing solar and wind. Hopefully at some point down the line we'd like to have CO2 capture, but the technology is not quite there for what it costs compared to what we will get back from it - unless we were about 10 times our size. Even our reject water from our incoming, we don't use an RO [Reverse Osmosis] system but it is similar to an RO system. The reject water is still perfectly clean, it's just high in carbon at that point. So we retain it in a holding tank, and we use that for cleaning down floors, cleaning tanks, so we're not wasting it. Normally, people just discharge that straight to the drain.” Miranda: “Also, the way we clean our inbound water is more efficient than RO. And that is a new bit of technology, the Voltea, it uses magnetism to pull out the bits you don't want in the water rather than a sieve like RO.”

Continued on page 27

image Theresa Undine

You accessed a number of grants to help with the investment, how did that come about?

Miranda: “We actually worked with a local rural grants consultant. And we got a really significant sum. We were a big capex startup, and I think it was something like 10% or 12% of our initial startup cost was covered by a grant from a European fund. So it was through Defra and it’s called LEADER funding. While I think it's Brussels money, it's awarded by a committee of local counsellors. We got it for bringing jobs to a rural area – that was our qualifying criteria. So we had to commit to a certain amount of jobs in a certain period of time. And we actually were double awarded. So we were awarded one pot from that fund. And then another pot from the same fund went to our landlord because we were partnered in committing to developing the barn where the brewery is. Without that we wouldn't have been able to afford all of the technology that went into making this brewery exist in this particular spot. It also funded a lot of our barrel project. We've got a custom made coolship so that we can deploy traditional Belgian techniques of inoculating the wort. And we've got some really beautiful wooden foeders.”

How has your beer range developed since you launched?

Miranda: “On our core side, we've got quite a few American style pales and IPAs, both East and West Coast. And we do tend to make nice Belgian beers. So we've got a continental pale, just like a Belgian pale, and a grisette. We try to keep it quite broad in our styles. And we've collaborated far and wide. This Spring we've got Burning Sky coming up for a collab and Cloudwater. We've done collaborations with Deya and Verdant. We've also done international collaborations with Amundsen and Fonta Flora who are in North Carolina who are also a farmhouse brewery.” Bates: “We mainly focus on three areas. West Coast for pales and IPAs. German style beers, and Belgian style beers. Belgian ones a bit broader, because it's a pretty broad brush with everything from very clean to mixed fermentations, spawns. Here and there if we do a collab, we might do a riff on another style, but those are our main three points of focus on the fresh side. The Belgian side is a broad umbrella so that would include all of our mixed ferms stuff.”

Miranda: “We call that side the Fermata range – which in musical terms means to pause or elongate a note. Duration lends itself to thinking about tempo and time.”

Education is very important to you at Duration, how does that work in practice?

Miranda: “Because we've set up this taproom, we've been able to have a few event evenings. I think beer can be really obtuse, especially now that it's sort of exploded. So I think education is really important. We offer online tours, and we do in person tours, just connecting people to how a beer is made. It's amazing how many people don't know how long the fermentation process happens, or how variable some of our basic ingredients can be based on the weather. I think, to make beer approachable, you have to be educational with it."

Bates: “I think the major thing was putting the focus on the fact that it is agricultural-based ingredients. Everything is becoming too mass dominated over the past 70 or 80 years. Where it's almost ubiquitous that you pull a tap and beer flows like water out of your tap, nobody thinks about it, but it's not a mass produced thing. People are often astonished that come on tours. I'd say probably 75% of people don't know that barley even goes in the beer.”

Miranda: “A big part of our tour is saying, you know, as a small producer, we pay about seven pence a can, and about nine pence a label. And in this tank of beer, we might put £1,000 of hops, but only £200 worth of grain. I think it's really important to be quite transparent about it.”

We offer online tours, and we do in person tours, just connecting people to how a beer is made.

Continued on page 29

We were bringing in 200 or 300 people across a weekend over the summer.

image Ashley Carter

Do you think the UK’s small brewers could be doing more to become more sustainable?

Miranda: “I think tonnes more could be done. I think that in brewing inherently there is a lot of waste. I know that Deya in Cheltenham work with a sustainability body that monitors and assesses their performance. I think if SIBA, or other people, were to say, ‘here are the places where you can do that’ – it’s a really good credential, because I think consumers, and the whole supply chain, needs to think a lot more about those matters, because when all the trees have been chopped down that's it. I feel like the time is now to get thinking in that way. We do it as people and we all recycle as people but as companies I think we all need to be held to account a lot more.”

What main challenges are you facing right now as a business?

Bates: “It’ll probably be growth. It will be capital expenditure. We’re a cash intensive business, and it's very tough if people aren't paying their bills, or anything like that, so you've always got to have your eye on that. Because we still have to pay our suppliers at the end of the month, whether we've been paid for that beer that's going out or not. So it's probably those two things and they'll go hand in hand. And where that cash is going to go, and where it's going to make the best investment in your people, your equipment, your beer.”

What key projects do you have planned for 2022?

Miranda: “We're just undertaking a small plant expansion at the moment, that will give us probably about 10% better yield off all of our cellar by installing a centrifuge. And then we're just adding a couple more tanks to the cellar to meet demand. Then our next big project is the alfresco taproom. We were bringing in 200 or 300 people across a weekend over the summer, but really we only have an outside area, and a very small inside area. So we want to build a custom taproom on site. That's going to be a big project. We’re raising the funds for it this year, and then hopefully implementing it next year. And then on the brew side, hopefully, we did so much when we were building it that really the add-ons, as we grow are going to be negligible. We've not got the ambition to grow to a super-sized brewery anyway.”

What are you proudest of since you launched Duration?

Miranda: “I am so proud of our onward supply chain. I feel like we're sort of tertiary in our industry, and in these last 18 months at certain points, we've not had any of the on-trade venues in play. We've only had independent off-trade retailers. And I feel like everyone has really pulled together. Everyone's understood that the way beer gets drunk has gone through different permutations in this last 18 months. And I would say that how, as an industry, we pulled together, we even managed to have a little insular look at ourselves, and look at areas where we want to improve with all the outpouring of stories of misogyny. So we've not only had a sort of internal look at our practices and how we operate, but we've managed to keep good beer flowing. I feel proud just of the industry, and especially what I see as our sort of brand ambassadors, the people that connect our beers to the public. I'm really proud of them and of our team. And then for me personally I am really proud that we were given some recognitions. We won Best New Brewery of the Year last year, and we won Best New Beer of the Year.”

Who do you most admire in the craft beer market at the moment and why?

Miranda: “Internationally, Bates and I would both say Sierra Nevada, just hands down for craft beer, and leading the way with their innovations and their carbon neutral goals and sustainability and just deliciousness of beer. I also really admire Deya for actually measuring and monitoring their levels of sustainability, because that's setting a standard. And then for me, purely for admiration from one brewer to another, it’s got to be Burning Sky. Just for jumping off a ledge and saying that beer can go in a different direction. It might take years and years and not be viable, and you’re not going to see the results for a while, but it’s important that these styles of beers exist in the world. That to me is so inspirational.”