SIBA Autumn Journal 2019

ISSUE 114 A UT U M N 2 0 1 9

ALL TOGETHER NOW HOP HIDEOUT’S JULES GRAY ON CREATING COMMUNITIES

COMMUNITY FOCUS SIBA MEMBERS LOVING LOCAL

OMNIPOLLO SWEDEN COLLABORATING WORLDWIDE

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS

GUEST COLUMNIST JONNY GARRETT

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CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE

EDITOR'S COMMENT

WORDS JONNY GARRETT PHOTOGRAPHY DOUGLAS BARCLAY

WELCOME

TO THE AUTUMN ISSUE OF THE SIBA JOURNAL WHICH THIS TIME HAS A ‘COMMUNITY’ THEME. What does community mean to you and your business?

As our Guest Columnist in this edition, Jonny Garrett from the Craft Beer Channel, rightly points out in his column on page 33, community really is something that sets the independent craft beer sector apart from other industries. Collaboration and networking as an industry are the bread and butter of the success we have been seeing in our part of the market in recent times, and there are very few other businesses where, even in a competitive market, people are willing to share so much with new entrants and other like-minded brewers. Community also touches every part of what independent brewers do, from sharing knowledge and ideas with other brewers and suppliers at events and festivals, to joining the frequent debates on beer Twitter, to creating your own community of loyal customers both online and at retail.

Equally, community is at the heart of what each of you does directly within your local sphere. We feature some wonderful stories of SIBA Members reaching out to charities and local groups in their area, raising money, supporting local people and genuinely putting themselves at the centre of community life (see our Community Focus on pages 18-23). At a time when many community services are closing, especially pubs, shops and meeting spaces, small independent craft brewers are filling that void and bringing people back together with events, taprooms and local investment.

We also hear in this issue from Jules Gray from the Hop Hideout in Sheffield who is also the founder of Sheffield Beer Week.

She has not only built a thriving community around her small independent craft beer shop and Beer Week event, but is now part of a local community initiative, Kommune, where she shares space and collaborates with independent restaurants, street food

vans and even a bookshop (see the Big Interview on pages 3441).

Another business right at the centre of its community is Wiper & True in Bristol, and we caught up with founder Michael Wiper for our Meet the Brewer feature to find out more about his own journey in the beer industry and the importance Wiper & True places on community (see pages 25-31).

Community can also extend far beyond a particular locality. In this issue’s Business Profile (see pages 48-55) we find out how no and low alcohol pioneer Big Drop, a brewery with no permanent site, has built a huge following for its low alcohol beers and turned gypsy brewing to its advantage, using the network of contacts that provided to inform the development of the business.

Finally, Swedish brewer Omnipollo has a truly global community, with innovative collaborations across the world bringing craft brewers and drinkers together (see Around the World pages 42-47). Omnipollo’s collaborations are without borders, and are inspired by a multitude of different styles and tastes. This has helped them produce some of the most interesting, inspiring and unusual beers in the current market.

The Winter issue is due out in December so do please keep those updates, news and views coming in to me at caroline.nodder@ siba.co.uk, and feel free to add me to your press release or media distribution lists to be included in our Supplier and Brewery News sections – the next deadline for submissions will be November 4th.

Happy reading!

Caroline CAROLINE NODDER EDITOR, SIBA JOURNAL caroline.nodder@siba.co.uk

Society of Independent Brewers PO Box 136, Ripon, North Yorkshire HG4 5WW Tel: 01765 640 441 www.siba.co.uk Email: riponoffice@siba.co.uk

Editor: Caroline Nodder (caroline.nodder@siba.co.uk) Published by: Media Alive Limited Produced on behalf of SIBA by: Media Alive Limited, 2nd Floor, The Red House, 119 Fore Street, Hertford, Hertfordshire SG14 1AX. T: 01992 505 810 Creative Director: Darren Kefford (darren@wearema.co.uk) Studio Manager: Jon Hardy (jon@wearema.co.uk) Advertising Manager: Claire Rooney (claire@wearema.co.uk) Managing Director: Dan Rooney (dan@wearema.co.uk)

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or be any other means, electronic or mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of SIBA and/or Media Alive Limited.

Whilst every effort is made to ensure that the information in this publication is accurate and up-to-date, neither SIBA nor Media Alive Limited take any responsibility for errors or omissions. Opinions expressed in editorial contributions to this publication are those of their respective authors and not necessarily shared either by SIBA or Media Alive Limited.

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SIBA JOURNAL AUTUMN 2019

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A UT U M N

CONTENTS

2019 ISSUE 114

MEMBER BENEFITS

BACK TO BUSINESS

BIG DROP

FIND OUT HOW SIBA IS DELIVERING FOR BREWERS

BLAZING A TRAIL IN THE NO AND LOW MARKET

ADVICE ON LAW, FINANCE, DIGITAL AND CELLAR MANAGEMENT

PAGE 17

PAGE 48-55

PAGES 57-63

NEWS 9-15 17 66-71 76-87 89-101

FEATURES

SIBA NEWS

18-23

SIBA MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS

25-31

All the news from SIBA HQ

What SIBA is delivering for brewers

REGIONAL BEER COMPETITIONS

34-41

South East, Midlands & East regional competitions

SIBA BREWERS’ NEWS

The latest from our Brewing Members around the UK

SUPPLIER NEWS

News and views from SIBA’s Supplier Associate Members

COMMENT 3 7 33 65

EDITOR’S COMMENT

Caroline Nodder on community matters

CEO’S UPDATE

James Calder on SIBA’s mission to deliver for brewers

GUEST COLUMNIST

Craft Beer Channel’s Jonny Garrett looks at the benefit of building community

TECHNICAL FOCUS

Brewlab’s Dr Keith Thomas examines toxins

42-47 48-55

COMMUNITY FOCUS

How SIBA Members support their local communities

MEET THE BREWER

Michael Wiper, founder of Wiper & True in Bristol, tells us about his beer journey

T HE BIG INTERVIEW

Jules Gray from the Hop Hideout in Sheffield discusses what community means to her

AROUND THE WORLD

We meet Henok Fentie, one half of the innovative duo making waves globally in craft beer as Omnipollo

BUSINESS PROFILE

The team behind no and low pioneer Big Drop on creating a whole new market

57-63

BUSINESS BACK OFFICE

76-79

GOLD MEMBERS

Advice on law, digital, finance & cellar management

Close Brothers and Thomas Fawcett

98

GOLD & SILVER MEMBERS

105

MEET THE SIBA REGIONS

106

SIBA CONTACTS

Listing of our key sponsors

Introducing two of SIBA’s Regional Directors

Contact details for key SIBA staff

WWW.SIBA.CO.UK

SIBA JOURNAL AUTUMN 2019

5

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CEO’S UPDATE

HOW CAN SIBA HELP OUR COMMUNITY? One of the biggest reasons I joined SIBA was the sense of community within the brewing Industry.

I’m fortunate enough to live in an area with a number of breweries and taprooms. Every time I visit one, or any brewery or tap around the country, I’m always amazed at the sense of warmth, ease and familiarity I have with them.

Now I’ve been in the industry for a couple of years this sense of community at SIBA competitions, at meetings and at festivals, has only strengthened my belief that we as a collective, as a community, can achieve great things if we work together.

BREWERS ARE GREAT AT SHARING KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERTISE, AND WE’RE BUILDING ON THAT WITH OUR NEW DELIVERING FOR BREWERS INITIATIVE.

That’s why SIBA’s role is more important now than ever. Whilst it’s only right and proper that this issue of the SIBA Journal celebrates our community, we have to be pragmatic and recognise that our community and our way of life is under threat in a number of ways.

We’re under threat from poor beer quality in pubs, from globals using their muscle to push us around and we’re under threat from Government with higher taxes, regulation and red tape.

That’s why SIBA needs to be Delivering for Brewers.

I’ve been into Downing Street and will be in HM Treasury in the next few weeks making that case.

SIBA is the only body pushing against the might of the globals and big companies in the press and through SIBA’s Assured Independent British Craft Brewer seal. We need to give consumers the knowledge and understanding that what they are drinking is the real deal.

Not macro beer with a fancy ‘craft’ label.

Our community also needs to pull together to help each other. Brewers are great at sharing knowledge and expertise, and we’re building on that with our new Delivering for Brewers initiative. This includes a range of tools and benefits including the already launched SIBA Practical Labelling Guide (see page 9). I hope you’ve all seen it and find it useful.

My question to brewers reading this is a simple one. How can SIBA help our community? What could we be doing that brings people together, rather than drives them apart?

Email me your thoughts at the contact details below.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this issue celebrating what we do as a community, for our communities. It’s a good one!

Cheers!

All independent breweries should know that SIBA is the only body at the highest seats in Government arguing for positive reform of Small Breweries’ Relief that doesn’t harm any small brewer. No small brewer should lose any relief due to Government reform.

James

WWW.SIBA.CO.UK

JAMES CALDER SIBA CEO james.calder@siba.co.uk

SIBA JOURNAL AUTUMN 2019

7

SIBA CHAIRMAN'S COLUMN

JOIN OUR SIBA BOARD! As I write this column, the country faces political uncertainty – by the time you read this, Brexit may or may not have happened! However, whatever your political outlook, we must hope for calmer economic and political waters moving forwards in the interests of the economy and of our industry. We can but hope that the new Chancellor will heed the messages that we and others have communicated that beer duty is too high, that our brewing and pubs sectors will be damaged by any further increase in beer duty, and that reform is required.

In the last month, two giants of the beer and pub world have succumbed to takeover – Ei group to Stonegate and Greene King to Hong Kong’s CK Asset Holdings. This brings renewed uncertainty for small brewers – will the purchase of Ei group’s tenanted pubs lead to more or less market access for smaller brewers and will the new owners of Greene King continue to offer brewers access via SIBA Beerflex?

On top of all this, there is no doubt that the major global and national brewers are flexing their muscles in the craft beer market. They can afford to deep discount their brands, whether in the freetrade or

8

SIBA JOURNAL AUTUMN 2019

supermarkets, and many of these brands are cleverly disguised to appeal to less savvy beer buyers as authentic “craft” beer. There is no quick fix for smaller brewers to combat these forces; however, by sticking together, using SIBA’s Assured logo, promoting yourself well and making damn good beer you will stand a fighting chance!

CAMRA’s 2020 Good Beer Guide has also just been published. This shows for the second consecutive year that many more breweries have closed in the last 12 months than have opened or are planned to open. Again, this is a sign of the times and a strong indicator as to how competitive the market is. There is no room for complacency and any brewer who naïvely believes that they can get away with mediocrity is in for a shock. We all need to up our game if we are to survive and prosper!

I’m delighted that the first two months of James Calder’s role as SIBA’s Chief Executive are already bearing fruit with several new initiatives including a new benefit for SIBA members to be announced each month. James brings new energy to SIBA and many of you will already have met him as he travels around the regions.

We have just launched our 2019 cost bench-marking survey and I hope that as many of you as possible will participate this year. The more brewers who do so, the better - the resulting report will be to the advantage of all who join in. It is not difficult to complete, though it will need you to devote an hour or so of quality time. In terms of member benefits, we have also recently announced that some tools on the Toolbox that were previously charged for are now free to members.

SIBA’s governance is occasionally questioned and as some of you may

be unaware of the intricacies of this I’ll briefly address it here.

SIBA is a representative democracy with a Board comprised of three elected representatives from each region plus four non-Executive directors who bring expertise and balance to the Board.

Whilst this is a large Board it does enable healthy debate and is truly representative of the regions. It is clearly too large to functionally oversee SIBA’s day to day affairs which, instead, are delegated to and managed by a much smaller Executive comprising three Elected Directors, the four Non-Execs plus the Chief Executive – James Calder. Each year two of these director positions are up for election. The Board carried out a fit for purpose governance review in early 2019 and will review its governance structure annually from now on.

To ensure good governance it is really important that we continually refresh membership of the Board bringing in new faces and new experience.

Board membership is not overly timeconsuming, will enable you to contribute to addressing many of the issues brewers face and will give you valuable insight into how the industry works. I would urge all SIBA members to consider standing for election as a Regional Director.

Finally, this issue of the Journal celebrates SIBA members’ community involvement which I’m sure you will agree is impressive and demonstrates how we can all make a difference in our immediate local community – can this be said of large global and national brewers?

Cheers

Ian

IAN FOZARD CHAIRMAN ian.fozard@siba.co.uk

SIBA NEWS

New SIBA Membership benefits launched as part of our commitment to Delivering for Brewers SIBA is expanding the member benefits you receive as part of your membership package. Below are details of three new benefits that have now been introduced as part of our new Delivering for Brewers initiative, which promises new additional benefits and opportunities for brewers throughout the next 12 months.

FOR

SIBA Practical Guide to Labelling As part of our 'Delivering for Brewers' member benefits initiative the SIBA Practical Guide to Labelling is now live on the Member's Toolbox.

This guide sets out exactly what you should be showing on your bottle, can, cask and keg labels including what is mandatory by law and what is advised - i.e. best practice.

The guide includes advice on allergens, recycling, alcohol units, best before dates and a range of other symbols and information which affect packaged beer products.

You can download the guide via Toolbox and all of the most important symbols have also been made available via the Toolbox Filing Cabinet, so to view the Labelling Guide and the various symbol files please visit toolbox.siba.co.uk and click Filing Cabinet > Artwork & Logos > Packaging Symbols.

Inclusion of these items of information is considered by SIBA, and other industry organisations, to constitute best practice.

must be provided directly on the package or on an attached label.

2 Draught products The Required information for Draught products

Members may wish to consider including these items of information, depending on their own individual circumstances and product-specific marketing requirements.

Symbol Downloads here

BEER

MANDATORY Example Text/Symbol Beer (Biere, Cerveza etc)

B

ABV

C

Net Quantity

Name of food should appear in a language appropriate to the countries in which it is to be marketed. All Mandatory information is subject to a minimum font size (FIC Article 13(2) and Annex IV) For further Information: please refer to FIC (Articles 15 and 17)

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

For further Information: Minimum Durability please refer to FIC Article 24 and

3

3

Batch/Lot/Gyle number

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

SIBA Brewing Member, Unit 4, The Old Laundry, Fishergreen, Ripon, North Yorkshire HG4 1NL OR SIBA Brewing Member - www.siba.co.uk (providing website contains contact details)

Allergens/ Ingredients

Ingredients: Water, Malted Barley, Wheat, Hops, Yeast OR Contains: Malted Barley, Wheat

F

Best Before Date

A B

B9106

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: UK. OR BREWED IN THE UK

Only required where failure to declare would be misleading, such as when exporting.

For further Information: please refer to FIC Article 26 and Annex IX

I

Special Storage Conditions/ Conditions for Use

eg REFRIGERATE BEFORE OPENING (when applied to bottled/canned beer)

Any instructions necessary to ensure appropriate storage conditions (FIC Article 25)

J

Instructions for Use

eg ALLOW TO SETTLE (cask beer) Bottle Conditioned. Pour Carefully’

Instruction should be provided only where it would not otherwise be possible to make appropriate use of the product (FIC Article 27)

Total Saleable Volume

BEER

C

Alc. 5.0% Vol.

M

BEER

Not required if Best Before Date is being used for batch traceability

H

If empty containers are left at retail premises for too long, licensees want them out of the way, often leading to them being incorrectly collected by another supplier or becoming a potential target for metal thieves.

SIBA is actively working with the industry and brewers to try to ease the burden of this issue on our members.

DELIVERING BREWERS

All SIBA Tools Now FREE

In addition, alongside our costs benchmarking survey we're going to re-jig, improve and re-launch the brewery costs calculating tool. Also free for brewing members!

Best Before: 01/09/2020

Annex X

Country of Origin

Whatever the size of your brewery, delay in getting your containers back, or losing containers altogether, represents a massive cost to the industry.

All SIBA Tools including the HACCP Tool, Traceability Tool and detailed Health & Safety Tool, previously charged at £50 each, are now available to all Brewing Members FREE of charge.

330ml

Brewery Name, Address and/or Website

Do you know of any companies or premises holding large numbers of containers?

Cask & Keg

3

Allergens may be listed in bold within an ingredients declaration – otherwise they can be listed as “Contains: X”.

For further info, please refer to https://www.food.gov.uk/business-guidance/ allergen-labelling-for-food-manufacturers Please note that it is mandatory for allergen info to be provided for large pack, draught beer as sold to the consumer (FIC Article 44).

Please also note that a QUID (Quantity Ingredient Declaration) is needed if a beer name mentions a particular ingredient. For example a ‘Honey Beer’ - the % of that ingredient must be declared within the ingredients listing as [Honey (2.5%)]

G

2

N/A

3

F G

I

REFRIGERATE BEFORE OPENING Bottle Conditioned. Pour Carefully

E

Ingredients: Water, Wheat, Malted Barley, Hops, Yeast

P

L

Canned on: 08/07/19

R

Q

Total Saleable Volume 39 litres

All cask labels must declare the ‘Total Saleable Volume’ of beer in each cask, excluding the unsaleable sediment.

Best Before: 01/09/2020 B9106

E

Bottle & Can

Alc. 5.0% Vol.

Beer stronger than 1.2% ABV does not require ingredients to be listed For further Information: please refer to FIC Articles 9 (k), 28 and Annex XII Legal Name, Net Quantity & ABV % must appear in the same field of vision (FIC Article 13(5)) For further Information: please refer to FIC Articles 23, 42 and Annex IX

D

Alc. 5.0% Vol.

1

Orange Labels are not to be used on containers being delivered into third party companies, such as wholesalers/drinks distributors.

3

OPTIONAL

may be provided on an attached label, or on accompanying commercial documents (sent before, or with, the delivery).

Legal Name of Food

Please make sure that Orange Labels are always attached to any containers that you intend to collect from the retail outlet yourself.

ADVISED

1 Bottle & Can The Required information for Bottle & Can products

Item

A cellar with 20 empties all with SIBA labels attached is a clearer statement to any visiting dray crews/wholesalers than 20 members’ containers with only two visible DO NOT UPLIFT orange labels attached.

These items of information are required under the European Food Information to Consumers Regulation No 1169/2011 (FIC) and the Food Information Regulations 2014 (FIR).

Under the European Food Information to Consumers Regulation No 1169/2011 (FIC) and the Food Information Regulations 2014 (FIR):

A

The SIBA Team have arranged for a fresh batch of labels to be sent to each brewing member, free of charge; to help reinvigorate the use of these industry recognised labels.

The more brewers using the SIBA Orange labels on direct deliveries, the more visible they become when out in the trade.

Please help us to identify and contact these companies – please send any information you have to containers@siba.co.uk – all details provided will be kept confidential.

MANDATORY

compliance@siba.co.uk

In this guide, where references are made to FIC Articles and Annexes, please use the link here

Free Batch of Orange Labels Delivered to every member FOC

Need to order more orange labels? Please email orangelabels@siba.co.uk

If you have any questions regarding the guide please email membership@siba.co.uk

SIBA has compiled this guide to offer brewers an easy “one stop shop” for advice, information and resources. If you have any comments or feedback on this guide, please e-mail

FOR

2

DELIVERING BREWERS

FOR

1

DELIVERING BREWERS

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1.7 Units - Drinkaware.co.uk BREWED IN THE UK SIBA Brewing Member, Unit 4, The Old Laundry, Fishergreen, Ripon, North Yorkshire HG4 1NL

siba.co.uk

/societyofindependentbrewers

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J

H D O

To read more about the range of Member Benefits you already receive from SIBA see page 17 in this issue of the Journal or email membership@siba.co.uk.

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SIBA JOURNAL AUTUMN 2019

9

SIBA NEWS

SIBA announces new Head of Public Affairs SIBA has appointed Barry Watts as its new Head of Public Affairs and Policy.

Barry joins SIBA from the Royal Economic Society and brings to the role significant public affairs and communications experience, having worked in Parliament and financial regulation. He also ran his own brewing company.

Welcoming Barry’s appointment, James Calder, SIBA’s Chief Executive, said: “I’m delighted to welcome Barry to the SIBA team. His knowledge of engagement, communications, stakeholder management and the brewing industry means he’ll be an invaluable asset to SIBA, and he will hit the ground running.”

Barry said of his new role: “I know how hard the SIBA team works to represent and support the craft brewing sector and I look forward to getting started. My first priority is to meet SIBA members across the country and hear their thoughts on the important issues facing the industry – from the review of Small Breweries' Relief to the introduction of a deposit return scheme – so we can continue to make the strongest case for independent craft beer to government.”

Struggling to locate missing containers?

Check Spa Trak Log in to spa-trak.co.uk to see where your containers are in order to arrange collection.

All possessing yards (except Kegwatch Clearing yards) can hold containers not bearing the SIBA orange label for a minimum of 28 days before requesting uplift by Kegwatch.

It is vital that brewers check Spa Trak weekly to ensure containers are collected before 28 days in order to avoid any unexpected uplift charges.

This timescale should also allow sufficient time for queries to be raised with possessing yards who may be holding containers which have potentially been collected from trading accounts in error.

Containers uplifted after 28 days (not bearing a SIBA orange label) are recharged to brewers by NCRNet.

For log in details please email admin@kegwatch.co.uk.

Contact Barry at barry.watts@siba.co.uk

Session IPAs take the two overall top spots at SIBA South East Independent Beer Awards Two session strength beers have surpassed stronger rivals at a flagship beer competition in the South East.

10

‘Imperial IPA’ category where the brews are even stronger still.

Signature Brew’s ‘Roadie’ has been named the best cask beer in the South East, with West Berkshire Brewery’s ‘India Session Ale’ being awarded best bottle and can beer, at the SIBA South East Independent Beer Awards.

Signature Brew won the cask competition Session IPA category and West Berkshire won the same category in the bottle and can competition, before both beers went on to take overall Gold in the final judging, which pits various beer styles of all strengths against each other.

Both beers are Session IPAs, meaning they have to be 4.3% or under as opposed to the regular ‘IPA’ category where beers can be up to 6.4%, or the

Commenting on the awards was Guy Sheppard, SIBA Competitions Chair, who said: “Both of these beers are aromatic, inviting and hugely drinkable and were

SIBA JOURNAL AUTUMN 2019

tasting on fantastic form at the South East Independent Beer Awards held once again at the excellent Juddians Beer Festival in Tonbridge. I’d like to say a huge well done to Signature Brew and West Berkshire and also to all of the other brewers who took home awards this year – the South East is an exciting region for beer and the quality of entries was impressively high, you should be very proud of your achievement.”

For the full list of winners from the South East region see pages 66-67.

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SIBA NEWS

SIBA ‘Brewer of the Year Award’ & ‘Independent Craft Beer Bar’ to make debut at Guild Awards SIBA has announced a partnership with the British Guild of Beer Writers for their annual awards this year.

SIBA will sponsor the ‘Brewer of the Year Award’, which is open to brewers of all kinds from across the UK, as well as bringing a new ‘independent craft brewers bar’ to the popular British Guild of Beer Writers Awards Dinner in early December.

“SIBA are delighted to be partnering with the British Guild of Beer Writers’ Annual

Awards & Dinner. As longtime supporters of the Guild we will this year be sponsoring the Brewer of the Year Award, as well as serving our members beers from the independent craft brewers bar during the Awards reception. So please come over and join us for a celebratory beer with one of our 2019 champion brewers,” said Neil Walker, SIBA Head of PR & Marketing.

Pete Brown, Beer Author and Chairman of the British Guild of Beer Writers, welcomed SIBA on board as Award partners, saying:

“I’m delighted to have SIBA partnering with us on our annual awards dinner. It shows what trade associations can do: getting exposure for brewers who lack the budgets to support events like this individually but can have an impact collectively. The Guild Awards Dinner is one of the best nights in the industry calendar - SIBA’s members will get a lot out of it, and so will members of the Guild.”

For more information about entering the awards go to www.beerguild.co.uk/awards

Special offer exclusive to SIBA members The Bar Owners’ Handbook – a practical guide to starting and running your own bar

The Craft Brewers’ Compendium – an omnibus of brewing materials

What brewer these days doesn’t want a fully-licensed tap all of their own, where they can guarantee an income stream, show off their range in brewery-fresh condition, test-market new and limitededition beers, entertain tour parties, and build a community of friends and fans? Or maybe you want a retail presence in town – a micropub or craft beer bar to promote your brewery and its beers to trade and public alike?

Brewing has become so much more fun since somebody decided that if you could eat it, you could probably put it in beer too. Herbs, spices, fruits, vegetables, oysters – it’s all a long way from the Reinheitsgebot!

But how to go about it? Buy or lease a traditional pub? Or rent a shopfront and convert it yourself? How can you keep overheads down to 30% of turnover? How can you dodge business rates altogether? What are the rules regarding dogs in pubs? What determines the number of loos you should install?

Do you have to offer customers free water?

Today’s craft or micro brewery is as much a playground as a place of work; and for every commercial brewer experimenting away like a medieval alchemist there are 10 or a dozen home brewers who are just as inquisitive and if anything more enthusiastic and playful (after all, the home brewer can afford the odd disaster!).

But nobody has ever tried to list in one book all the contents of the craft brewer’s pantry: all the malts, the grains, the fruit and veg, the hops, the herbs and spices, the flowers, the yeasts, the bacilli and all the rest.

Until now...

These and hundreds of other financial, practical and legal questions are answered by The Bar Owners’ Handbook – the essential bridge between the very different worlds of brewer and retailer, with a foreword by SIBA chairman Ian Fozard.

The Craft Brewers’ Compendium includes more than 500 ingredients and process aids including 300 hop varieties for you to browse, mull over, and play with. It’s not only a mine of abstruse information, it’s a lot of fun too.

Available exclusively to SIBA members at £9.99 inc p&p (full price £12.95). Order your copy at www.posthousepublishing.com.

Available exclusively to SIBA members at £9.99 inc p&p (full price £14.95). Order your copy at www.posthousepublishing.com

About the author Ted Bruning has been a journalist and author in the drinks industry and hospitality trade press since joining the Morning Advertiser in 1986. He was editor of What’s Brewing from 1999-2006; his many book credits include the best-selling Microbrewers’ Handbook and Craft Distillers’ Handbook.

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SIBA JOURNAL AUTUMN 2019

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SIBA NEWS

New Welsh language Assured Independent British Craft Brewer seal now available Bragwr Crefft Prydeinig Annibynnol Gwarantedig Welsh brewery Bragdy Twt Lol, now in its fourth year of operation, has in collaboration with SIBA, developed the first Welsh Language Assured Independent Craft Brewer seal.

Philip Thomas, Director of Twt Lol, said: “At Twt Lol, everything we do is bilingual, Welsh and English. So, in order for us to use SIBA’s Assured Craft Brewer seal, it had to be bilingual! We worked with SIBA by providing the translation and by conforming to design good practice of having the Welsh first, followed by the English script, SIBA came up with this innovative design.

“We welcome all brewers, Welsh or British, to use this seal, after all the Welsh language is a part of our British Heritage and culture.”

To get access to the logo you can email the Wales & West Elected Directors or SIBA’s Head of Comms & Marketing Neil Walker via neil.walker@siba.co.uk

“Raspberry Wheat” & “Oxford Dark Blue” named best independent craft beers in the Midlands Raspberry Wheat Beer by Milestone Brewery and Oxford Dark Blue by White Horse Brewery have taken home the two top spots at the SIBA Midlands Independent Beer Awards 2019, winning overall Gold in “Cask” and “Bottle & Can” at the prestigious awards.

The “Brewers’ Choice” awards, run by SIBA and hosted by the Peterborough CAMRA Beer Festival, are judged by brewers and beer experts looking for the very best independent craft beers from the region.

Milestone Brewery’s Raspberry Wheat Beer is brewed with heaps of fresh British raspberries, which give the beer a rosegold appearance and a light floral, fruity aroma. The beer proved a huge hit with judges and took home the overall Gold in the cask competition. Accepting the award for Milestone was brewer Gary Gooch, who said: “It means absolutely everything

to win this award! We have been going for 16 years but we’ve never won big with this one despite it being a beer we are hugely proud of – so it’s amazing to take home the overall Gold! We think it’s a great beer and hugely seasonal as we use real fresh British raspberries, which we puree by hand before adding to the beer. They give the finished beer a rose-gold appearance and beautiful flavour and aroma.”

White Horse Brewery’s Oxford Dark Blue, which nods to Oxford University’s colours, is a dark British bitter with aromas of chocolate and coffee, and a fruity fullbodied flavour. The classic British ale scored extremely well with judges and took the overall Gold in the Bottle & Can competition, collecting the award was MD Anneli Baxter, who said: “This award is all down to the brewers, the hard work from our brewery team who all contribute into making our beers taste the best they can.

Attended a recent beer competition? Tag yourself in our photos on Facebook!

Wherever possible we upload all of the competition photos to our Facebook page so why not take a look and then tag you or your colleagues in the photos? /SocietyOfIndependentBrewers

We’re delighted to win. It’s a beer that is traditional but it’s full of flavour, with loads of chocolate and coffee, which just leaves you wanting more.”

SIBA’s Chief Executive James Calder presented the breweries with their top awards and had this to say on the quality of entries at this year’s awards: “The winning beers really are the best of the best from the SIBA Midlands region and will now go on to fight it out with the best beers from across the UK at our National Finals in Liverpool next year. I’d like to congratulate all of the winners, particularly our overall Gold Champions Milestone and White Horse, and also thank all of the brewers who help out in the running of the competition. It’s a competition run by brewers, for brewers, and the whole operation was this year better than ever.”

For the full list of winners see pages 68 and 69.

Also check out our Instagram!

We try to give a behind-the-scenes look of events via our Instagram, as well as sharing some of the best photos of our members' beers featuring the Assured Independent British Craft Brewer logo. /societyofindependentbrewers

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Course Registration Now Open!

siebelinstitute.com/courses

WBA Concise Course in Brewing Technology Available Online and On-Campus

Perfect for anyone looking to begin a formal brewing education, the WBA Concise Course in Brewing Technology gives students a level of brewing knowledge that will benefit them in all areas of the brewery.

2019-2020 Start Dates

3-Month Online Courses

September 8, 2019 January 13, 2020 May 4, 2020

2-Week Chicago Campus

November 4, 2019 May 11, 2020

SIBA MEMBER BENEFITS

Membership Benefits BRITISH INDEPENDENT BREWING GOVERNMENT LOBBYING BREWERS’ VOICES ARE BEING HEARD SIBA continues to lobby on behalf of members and upped its game during 2018/2019 pushing forward the SIBA Proposal on Small Brewers Relief, meeting more politicians and policy makers to make sure brewers’ voices are heard.

Following a duty freeze in January 2019 which could have seen Britains brewer’s be hit by £100m, SIBA will continue to defend SBR at current levels whilst lobbying for positive reform.

BEER AWARDS SIBA INDEPENDENT BEER AWARDS SIBA’s Independent Beer Awards take place throughout the UK, with 8 Regional competitions and a national final held at BeerX UK each year. As well as gaining valuable local and national press coverage, award winning beers have the opportunity to participate in the SIBA Taste of Champions catalogue which will raise the profile of your business and products to a number of leading retailers both in the on and off trade.

SIBA offers brewing members a wide range of benefits. If there are any membership benefits you would like SIBA to investigate, then please email your ideas to membership@siba.co.uk

Here is a reminder of just some of SIBA’s current membership benefits: COMPLIANCE

number of leading companies within the Industry, the SIBA Food Safety Quality Audit continues to be adopted by a number of Brewing Members who do not hold an alternative accreditation. To assist Brewers in becoming compliant, tools such as HACCP, Traceability and Health & Safety are made available to all Brewing Members via the Toolbox.

DELIVERING BREWERS

As well as our existing range of SIBA Member Benefits we are going to be launching new tools, benefits and opportunities throughout the year with our ‘Delivering for Brewers’ initiative.

Watch this space!

LEGAL HELPLINE FREE ADVICE FROM EXPERIENCED SOLICITORS As with all manufacturing industries, breweries are unfortunately open to a variety of legal issues. To help protect your brewing business SIBA has partnered with Napthens solicitors to ensure members receive the best advice from a firm with a wealth of experience.

All members are eligible for one hour’s free legal advice.

CHAMPIONING INDEPENDENCE

FIGHTING FOR ASSURED FOOD SAFETY AND QUALITY ASSURANCE FROM PROFESSIONAL BREWING BUSINESSES INDEPENDENT BRITISH CRAFT BREWERS Recognised as a minimum standard by a

FOR

THE VOICE OF

NEWS & COMMUNICATIONS KEEPING MEMBERS UP TO SPEED Every quarter SIBA Members receive a copy of the SIBA Journal through the post. Featuring industry news and guest articles from some of the UK’s best beer writers, as well as interviews, meet the brewer and business profiles, the SIBA Journal is your portal to the wider world of independent brewing.

Weekly you also receive ‘Brewing in Brief’, which drops into members’ email inboxes to give a snapshot of the weeks industry news, SIBA internal news and important dates for the diary!

WWW.SIBA.CO.UK

SIBA’S ‘Assured Independent British Craft Brewer’ seal can only be used free of charge by all SIBA member breweries like you who are independent, relatively small, and brewing quality beer as assured by the SIBA Food Safety & Quality standard.

The seal is a unique USP in a crowded beer market and resonates with consumers, with more than half saying they would be more likely to buy a beer which carries the seal.

If you have any questions email neil.walker@siba.co.uk

BEERX UK FREE ENTRY TO THE UK’S LARGEST INDEPENDENT CRAFT BREWING TRADE SHOW BeerX UK is the UK’s biggest and best independent craft brewing event, with a huge trade-only showcase of awardwinning beers, an ever expanding trade show of hundreds of the best beer industry suppliers, as well as a packed schedule of seminars, panel debates and workshops.

Brewing & Not Yet Brewing Members are entitled to 1 Free of Charge Ticket to SIBA’s Annual event BeerX UK – BeerX UK 2020 11-12th March is certainly not to be missed!

PROMOTION MARKETING SIBA BREWERIES The SIBA COMMS Team work with selected Trade Shows and industry events - such as Imbibe Live, Ei Road Shows, the British Guild of Beer Writers Dinner, The Michelin Guide Launch - in order to raise the profile of our members and help engage the right people with the fantastic independent craft beers you brew.

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COMMUNITY FOCUS

BREWERS IN THE COMMUNITY The theme of community, which we are focussing on in this issue of the SIBA Journal, is one that shone through very strongly in the results of the latest SIBA Members Survey, as well as being a key area we explored in this year’s SIBA British Craft Beer Report. Our members offer essential support to the communities they serve, with many now offering community spaces at their brewery sites, as well as supporting local events and charities and in many cases partnering with other local groups and businesses to form a local hub where people can meet and socialise. As we read more and more headlines about the collapse of the traditional high street and disintegration of community life in many villages and towns where services have been cut, brewers are really stepping up to the plate. Here we bring you some highlights from SIBA’s most recent surveys, and also a selection of news stories about some of our members’ most recent community achievements…

84% OF SIBA MEMBERS SAY THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH THEIR COMMUNITY IS IMPORTANT OR EXTRMELY IMPORTANT TO THEIR BUSINESS

84%

DOES YOUR BREWERY HAVE THESE SERVICES ON-SITE? Shop

40%

Visitor centre 30%

35%

Tap bar

27%

20%

This year’s SIBA Members’ Survey showed yet again how embedded in their communities SIBA member breweries are, with many of them now providing their communities with essential services and social spaces like brewery taps, shops and visitor centres.

The number providing on site facilities like these has risen from 62% in 2017 to 71% in 2018 – that is seven out of 10 small breweries. This is critical at a time when pubs are continuing to close and local services like community centres and village halls have already been lost.

So it is not surprising that this year, while the number of brewers who said the community was ‘important’ or ‘extremely important’ to them has remained stable at a significant 84%, the number of our members noting it was ‘extremely important’ has grown to 44% of the 352 who responded. And it is clear from our survey that this is a two-way relationship. Small brewers not only rely on the community for recruitment, logistics and sales, but they are also important supporters and investors in community life. The survey showed that of those brewers donating to good causes, 45% choose to support charities and organisations very close to the brewery site itself in their own local town or village.

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10%

9% 0% Please note some breweries have more than one of the above facilities

1 in 10

1 in 10 brewers said more than 25% of their turnover now came from their Shop / Tap Room / Visitor Centre

COMMUNITY FOCUS

Charitable trust SIBA members went above and beyond to support local causes and donate money and resources to local charities and organisations in 2018.

Our latest survey highlights show an impressive 86% of our members surveyed raised money for at least one charity last year, with 44% supporting five or more charities during the course of 2018 – more than double the 18% in 2017. And 22% of those surveyed said in total they raised more than £1,000 for their chosen cause or causes.

44%

20%

HOW MANY CHARITIES HAVE YOU SUPPORTED OVER THE LAST 12 MONTHS? 0

14%

1

21%

2-5 more than 5

47%

47% OF SIBA MEMBERS SUPPORT CHARITIES LOCAL TO THEIR BREWERY

IN THE PAST 12 MONTHS, HOW MUCH MONEY WAS DONATED BY YOUR BUSINESS TO CHARITIES?

60% 50%

56% £1-£1,000

40%

85%

85% OF SIBA BREWERS SUPPORTED AT LEAST 1 CHARITY IN 2018 AND

30%

GAVE TO MORE THAN 5 CHARITIES

20%

£1,001-£5,000 More than £5,000

1 in 5

22%

10%

8% 0%

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COMMUNITY FOCUS

COMMUNITY NEWS Exe Valley Brewery Beer Day brings the community together

Anne Duerden from Wold Top Brewery right, with representatives from Mind

Brewery garden reports record visitor numbers and raises £5K at charity opening Wold Top Brewery, on the Yorkshire coast, reported unprecedented visitor numbers at its annual Open Weekend this year.

The brewery welcomed 700 visitors and raised £5,000 for charity when it opened its award-winning brewery and gardens to the public recently.

Brewery co-founder and trained horticulturalist Gill Mellor said: "We are always delighted to welcome people to Hunmanby Grange and to raise valuable funds for the National Garden Scheme, St Cuthbert's Church at Burton Fleming and our charity of the year, Mind. Everybody enjoyed the gardens, the great food provided by Field and Forage and the ladies of the church, tours of the brewery and, of course, the beer!"

Since Hunmanby Grange first opened to the public under the National Garden Scheme in 1994, Gill and her team have raised over £45,000 for the scheme's nursing charities that include Macmillan Cancer Support, Marie Curie and Mind.

The National Garden Scheme is the most significant charitable funder of nursing charities in the country, donating over £55 million since its inception in 1927.

For more information go to www.woldtopbrewery.co.uk

Since 2014 Exe Valley Brewery has held what it calls ‘Beer Day’ to allow the local community to come and see the brewery and to raise money for charity.

Originally held to celebrate the brewery’s 30th Anniversary, Beer Day was so successful it has been held in mid-September every year since, with 2019 being the sixth such event.

The brewery is located in an old farm building with limited parking one mile from the village of Silverton in Devon and the logistics of accommodating hundreds of people there are interesting. To get people to and from the brewery the local Scout groups lend their minibus and some volunteer drivers to run a shuttle service to and from the village where there are service buses from and to Exeter or Tiverton for those who want to come from further afield.

Exe Valley donates all the beer, give tours of brewery, lays on a barbecue, puts on some music, runs raffles etc and all for a chosen charity, which this year is The Blue Cross. Many local people come out to help, and for a small brewery to do such an event would be impossible without help and all the monies taken are by donation, the brewery does not ask for anything for the beer, people can help themselves (under supervision), nor does it charge anything for the food and the musicians come along FOC as well. All the money is raised purely by people putting money in buckets and up to 2018 over £5,000 has been raised for charities both local and national.

A great event which the local community talks about for months before and afterwards!

For more information go to www.exevalleybrewery.co.uk

Annual ‘Festivale’ raises funds for Yorkshire Air Ambulance Great Newsome Brewery threw open its doors in June and hosted its popular annual ‘Festivale’ family charity event.

Now in its fifth year, the event raised much needed funds for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance. An amazing 800 people attended the event as the countryside came alive with craft beer, cider, wine, food and music.

The event raised a total of £3,936 for the charity. Bob Smailes, Fund Raising Manager for Yorkshire and the North East, called into the brewery last month to collect the cheque from Matthew and Doreen Hodgson.

The event has raised over £10,000 for local charities over the last four years.

The Great Newsome Brewery Festivale is set to return on Saturday 20th June 2020.

For more information go to www.greatnewsomebrewery.co.uk

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COMMUNITY FOCUS

Salcombe Brewery gives generous support to seahorse conservation Salcombe Brewery Co. is delighted to announce it has partnered with The Seahorse Trust to provide much needed support for these endangered creatures.

Since June, Salcombe has donated 5 pence for every bottle of Seahorse beer sold.

Owner of Salcombe Brewery Co., John Tiner, said: “At the launch of Salcombe Brewery Co. we adopted the seahorse as our logo as we are lucky enough to be based in an area which is a breeding ground for both British species of seahorse. However, worldwide these enchanting animals are under threat and so it seemed the obvious next step to support the trust’s conservation efforts and raise valuable funds for them through the sale of our much-loved Seahorse beer.”

Stewart Brewing hosts charity 10K Hop Run Stewart Brewing was established back in 2004 and has a long history of using their brand to support outdoor and sporting activities; the Edinburgh Marathon, the Gullane Beach Triathlon, Celtman Triathlon and more.

This year they decided it was about time to start an event of their very own, and so The Hop Run was founded. Working in partnership with other local business, Durty Events and Rosslyn Chapel, a 10k route was formed from the chapel down to the brewery, through the Midlothian countryside, and ending with a finish line and party at the brewery in Loanhead.

The event not only helped bring community business together but also brought in just shy of 300 people from the local area and beyond the take part. The brewery also used the event as a platform to support their charity partner Bright Sparks.

Bright Sparks is a local charity that helps disabled children in the community have access to play and learning opportunities. It has been working in partnership with the brewery since the start of the year and the Hop Run helped raised the total donations so far to £2,233.

The run was held on the 8th of June in what can only be described as the worse possible weather to hold a 10k trail run in, but the unfortunate weather only seemed to foster a greater sense of community among the runners.

“Every runner splashed through the mud and puddles with a smile on their face,” said Marketing & Events Manager Sarah Stirton. She added: “People committed themselves to the run 100% and there was a great sense of achievement felt at the end.”

Seahorse (ABV 4.4%) is a popular amber ale, handcrafted in Devon, overlooking the estuary that is home to this protected species. It is a sweet and smooth beer with a gentle spicy hop character, hints of burnt toffee, caramel and a smoked malty finish.

Taking its name from the Salcombe Brewery Co. logo, Seahorse has always been a firm favourite with drinkers both locally and now further afield nationwide. It has also recently won a Taste of the West Award. John Tiner comments: “It is a great opportunity for us to capitalise on the ever-growing popularity of Seahorse to spread the word about these endangered creatures and support their conservation.”

The Seahorse Trust was set up in 1999 to preserve and conserve the natural world, especially the marine environment, using Seahorses as their flagship species. Seahorses are a unique fish species that occupy the coastal areas of most of the world and it is these fragile eco-systems that are most under threat. Neil GarrickMaidmen from The Seahorse Trust added: “We are thrilled to have joined forces with Salcombe Brewery Co.. Every penny that they donate will directly help the trust in its efforts to study seahorses in the wild and to launch conservation programmes to ensure we have seahorses in the wild forever. We would like to say a massive thank you to Salcombe Brewery Co. for their generous support.”

Salcombe Brewery Co. takes pride in its local roots and values its coastal environs and as such, its partnership to support seahorses is just one of a number of its environmental commitments.

Salcombe Brewery Co. has already made steps to become plastic free in its onsite shop, no longer providing plastic bags but offering cotton or jute bags instead. Their event bars have also turned their back on plastic and use only compostable cups. With a strong commitment to being ‘plastic clever’ they are constantly looking for ways of reducing and replacing plastic in all aspects of their business.

For more information go to www.salcombebrewery.com

Celebrations at the finish line included finisher medal presentations, live music, street food and naturally plenty of beers.

The event was much more than just a 10k or just a charity fundraiser, the brewery and team involved hit upon something that really gave everyone involved a shared sense of comradery and community.

The team at Stewart Brewing are getting ready to launch The Hop Run 2020 before the end of this year and hope to see all the old faces and plenty of new for their second go around.

For more information go to www.stewartbrewing.co.uk

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COMMUNITY FOCUS

London Brewing Company launches ‘Thank You Thursdays’ The London Brewing Company, based at The Bohemia pub in North Finchley, sees community as one of the most important bonds the pub and the brewery has. Being based in residential North London it has established a strong relationship with all its locals and become a real hub for the community.

The brewery has supported local schools, celebrated its birthday with a free bar and BBQ for locals, allowed free use of its basement bar for community activities such as kids clubs, Thai chi for the elderly, and a whole host of other activities over the years. It also regularly donates to charities and provides them with discounts should they host meetings or events at the pub.

This lead to the launch last month of 'Thank You Thursdays', where the brewery is thanking its community for being part of The Bohemia and London Brewing Company.

These events will include: - £1 from every pint of London Brewing Co beer sold from the day being donated to a different local charity each month - The tapping of a special 'Community Cask' (a pin) where all 36 pints will be offered to locals and regulars for free from 5pm - Additional events and activities that come up as the brewery develops even stronger relationships with our charities.

The London Brewing Company is targeting £250 per event and will use the pub and brewery Social Media channels, in-house posters, and then any awareness it can drive through any partner charities. The events will run on the last Thursday of every month for the next year.

Brewery director Senan Sexton said: “We're really excited about this and see ourselves as integral to our home in North Finchley so we're expecting lots of interest, lots of happy faces, and a very busy pub.”

For more information go to www.londonbrewing.com

Three Anniversaries in one for The Sun Inn and Corvedale Brewery It is very rare for three major celebrations to happen at one time, however this was the joyous case recently at The Sun Inn and Corvedale Brewery.

Not only were the Pearce family celebrating 35 years at the establishment, they were also ticking off 20 years of brewing at The Corvedale brewery as well as marking the occasion of Norman and Teresa’s 40 years of marriage.

From the day that they moved in with their family they had the firm feeling that the pub was going to be a productive and happy home for them. It has been not only a warm and welcoming family run pub, but a NOT ONLY A WARM AND successful brewery business that has won a large number WELCOMING FAMILY of SIBA awards over the RUN PUB, BUT A years. The brewery was founded in 1999. Since then SUCCESSFUL BREWERY it has gone from strength BUSINESS THAT HAS to strength, winning for WON A LARGE NUMBER its bottled and cask beers, Oatmeal Stout and Golden OF SIBA AWARDS. Dale to name but a few.

Norman Pearce the owner and head brewer was also instrumental in the founding of the Ludlow Spring Festival.

In honour of its long standing success, the brewery has recently released two new beers, Corvedale Pale Ale and Corvedale Flyer, the first in tribute to the 20 years of brewing and the second (a ruby beer) in admiration of their ruby 40th wedding anniversary. The pub itself as well as the brewery shows no sign of slowing down. It has won many awards for its disabled access, community involvement and many certificates of excellence from Trip Advisor. One of the most noted successes was back in 1986 when the pub beat big name pub chains to win the ‘access to all’ award.

For more information follow @CorvedaleBrewer on Twitter

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COMMUNITY FOCUS

Fyne Ales brings community together for World Stone Skimming Championships Argyll brewery Fyne Ales is to sponsor Easdale’s World Stone Skimming Championships for the 13th consecutive year.

The competition, which is run by a team of volunteers and attracts people from all over the world for an afternoon of high-intensity skimming, is held on Easdale, an isolated island off Scotland’s west coast, two hours north of the Scottish brewery’s scenic location.

“We first started sponsoring the championships when my parents managed the brewery,” shared Fyne Ales MD, Jamie Delap. “They used to have a lot of fun watching and taking part in the competition, and it’s brilliant that we’ve been able to continue supporting the event for so many years - it’s a fantastic community event that brings people to our beautiful part of the world.”

For more information go to www.fyneales.com

Acorn Brewery becomes a ‘brewery for the people’ after success of Beer Club Acorn Brewery is celebrating the success of its community Beer Club, with over 350 members now regularly enjoying Acorn Beers at various community events across the year.

The idea originally came from a team meeting in 2018 where the idea was first discussed of becoming a ‘brewery for the people’, regularly welcoming the community into the brewery for events and to spread the word about the real ales the brewery produces.

The previous year Acorn introduced the Decades Range, whereby the public could enter a competition, via the brewery social media platforms, to name a beer. In return, the winner would have their name on the pump clip, a goodie bag filled with Acorn Beers and clothing as well as receiving a framed image of the pump clip, which would be presented to them at the launch of the beer.

This took off so well and the brewery’s presence on all social media platforms doubled, with competition entries for the year hitting over 1,500. With this captive audience, it was time to expanded on the success of the Decades Range and open up Acorn’s very own Beer Cub at the brewery. The aim was to engage with the people that consume its real ales, not just the licensees who sell them.

The Club was to take place on the last Friday of the month, with the starting date of August 2018. Work began early 2018 to set up the Beer Club as well as carry out some home improvements to turn what is a working brewery into a welcoming space where local people can come to relax, be educated in the brewing process whist enjoying an Acorn beer or two with locally sourced food.

The Club has been a roaring success, with over 350 members and regular numbers of over 80 members per Beer Club event.

The team is now busy thinking of ways to further grow this community initiative!

For more information go to www.acorn-brewery.co.uk

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MEET THE BREWER

MICHAEL WIPER, WIPER & TRUE

BREWER'S CV: y r making as a hobb 2008 - 2009 – Cide brewing beer 2009 - 2011 – Home learning to brew at 2011 – Day course The Kernel, London y brewer, Wiper & 2012 - 2013 – Gyps ing kit at Dominion True (initially us ery d Ashley Down Brew Brewery in Essex an rger breweries as in Bristol then la volumes grew) per & y brewer, using Wi 2014 – 2015 – Gyps hub l as a distribution True site in Bristo ewer, Wiper & True 2015 – Present – Br Brewery, Bristol

Brewing beer was not Michael Wiper’s first foray into the drinks sector, having got interested in the process of fermentation when he and his wife Francesca and a group of good friends tried their hands at cider making. The results were mixed, but in working to rectify mistakes and improve the end product Michael realised his true passion lay in the process of experimenting and perfecting recipes and processes. With making cider being a once a year opportunity, he looked to one of his other loves, beer, as a way of more regularly exploiting his new skills, although at that stage had no aspirations for brewing to become a career. That came later when a day spent brewing at The Kernel in London inspired Michael and his friend and co-founder Al True, along with Francesca, to start looking into making their hobby a commercial venture. A stint as a gypsy brewer led to the launch of Wiper & True in 2012 at a Bristol Christmas Market where beer drinkers and retailers in the local area were so enthusiastic about their initial three beers that it gave the trio the confidence to start searching for a permanent home. Three years later in 2015 the Wiper & True site in Bristol’s St Werburghs district produced its first brew, and the brewery finally had its home. The SIBA Journal’s Editor Caroline Nodder spoke to Michael to find out more about his journey and plans for the future…

Continued on page 27

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MEET THE BREWER

WE THOUGHT PERHAPS WE COULD PERSUADE SOME LOCAL BREWERS TO LET US USE THEIR KIT, AND I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE THEY SAID YES

Just as it supposedly happened for Sir Isaac Newton, it was an apple that first sparked the idea for the creation of one of Bristol’s best loved independent craft breweries, Wiper & True. Michael Wiper began his journey in brewing as a hobby cider maker, realising a love for the process and the experimentation that came with it which soon led him to try his hand at brewing beer. Although things did not always go to plan in the early days, he was soon hooked.

MIDDLE OF PUBLICATION

“I always think there is a homebrew god up there who makes sure that the first batch of anything you do is really quite drinkable, and that is what happened with us, but after that we had some disasters,” he laughs. “There is a lot of energy that goes into making something like that by hand and a lot of emotion, and that makes you want to work out what the issue was and get it right next time. I really fell in love with that process of making and creating something, but you can only make cider once a year, so one of my other loves was beer and I decided to try and make beer. This was around 2008, and at that point I didn’t have any aspirations to start my own brewery.”

That thought came a couple of years later at a time when Michael was considering a career move away from the renewable energy firm he was working at, and he spent a day learning about the commercial brewing process at The Kernel in London.

“I bumped into a few other people there who also went on to start breweries at the same time,” says Michael. “And I came away from that day inspired. I think in terms of the beer I was homebrewing what got me thinking about trying to do

it commercially was the reaction I was getting from people as I was getting better at it, which was ‘I usually don’t like beer, but I like this!’. So that got me thinking about the opportunities out there with people who were not really being invited into the beer world. At the time the target audience for beer was a lot less diverse and the approach – the branding and wording that was being used - was not very accessible to a broad audience.”

Michael and his friend Al True [co-founder] wrote down their thoughts on paper, and the initial blueprint for Wiper & True was born. At that time in 2011, Mikkeller in Denmark had just become something of a sensation and Michael, not yet having the experience or capital to build his own site, started to appreciate what could be achieved as a gypsy brewer.

“We thought perhaps we could persuade some local brewers to let us use their kit, and I still can’t believe they said yes!”

Initially producing three beers using kit at the Dominion Brewery in Essex and Ashley Down Brewery in Bristol, Wiper & True launched in December 2012 at a Christmas Market in Bristol with immediate success. Michael explains: “All our nerves about being new to the industry and not having the courage to buy a brewing kit and rent a warehouse were pretty quickly turned around, because the response was amazing. We were very lucky that walking past our market stall we had some key landlords and shop owners from Bristol who were really enthusiastic.

People straight away were really excited to have a new brewery in town and got behind it. We very quickly realised we would need to find our own space and

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more capacity.”

From January 2013 Wiper & True significantly increased production as a gypsy brewer, using 15 different breweries around the UK, three of which gave them almost permanent tank residency, and producing collaborations and oneoff beers with many others. “Every beer was different, we had no core beers at that stage,” says Michael, “and that was how we intended to start the business until we had our own site because the breweries we were using were so different, in everything from their water source, to their equipment, to their process, so it would have been really difficult to try and replicate any beer.”

This variety in production has been of huge benefit to Wiper & True in the longer term, and Michael describes it as an incredible journey, which helped them decide exactly what kit they would need on their permanent site when they eventually found it in 2014.

“Everyone we worked with hated something about their brew kit, and had had good and bad experiences with bits of equipment and installers, so we were able to get the best recommendations. We are pretty happy now with our set up and we learnt a lot from those guys. We found our site in 2014 and for the first year we used it just as a distribution hub, and started picking up second hand bits of kit. Then we did our first brew in the current set up in April 2015.”

Continued on page 29 SIBA JOURNAL AUTUMN 2019

27

MEET THE BREWER

The brewery is still based on the same site in the St Werburghs area of the city but almost as soon as they began brewing it became clear they would outgrow it fairly rapidly, and despite adding nearby warehousing, office space, a bottling line and now a new canning line and more tanks, the site is brewing to just under 500,000 litres and plans are already in motion to build a new brewery in the not too distant future. The new canning line means a move out of bottling, with a split of roughly 50% keg product, 40% cans and 10% cask.

The brewery team now has around 20 staff, including those that run the popular taproom on site at the brewery at weekends, and is proudly balanced 50/50 between female and male staff members, a figure many small brewers can only aspire too, and one Michael is rightly proud of.

The beers Wiper & True produce today are still rooted in the experimental style that inspired Michael at the start of his journey, and even the ‘core’ range of regulars have an experimental twist to them, although more recently the team’s focus has moved from constantly creating new beers to perfecting recipes and concentrating on consistency.

As Michael puts it: “We started with a beer called Milkshake, a low alcohol really thick vanilla milk stout, which didn’t really come out as I was hoping in my head, but we started getting calls to the brewery asking when we were going to be brewing it again. So we tweaked the recipe and put it out again. That happened 27 times!

That was the first beer we had that kind of reaction to and it became this cool beer in Bristol unexpectedly, so it was amazing in terms of sales, but I still wasn’t happy with the recipe so we had one more crack at it and finally got it right. And it is now still a big part of what we do.

“It started off being all about experimentation, and when I was doing a tap takeover I’d say there is no such thing as a perfect pint, there are just lots of different iterations of great beers. Now that has evolved and we are more obsessed with finding perfection, trying to repeat things and make a perfect beer, and that is reflected in the way we as a team go and drink beer. I think for the first time over the last year or so we are more likely to go back to something we know that is good and we enjoy.”

The brewery also produces a 4.2% ABV Pale Ale that uses the same malts and the same yeast but has three hops which rotate, giving it a slightly different flavour profile each time. And despite its changeable nature, this hasn’t stopped supermarket chain Waitrose snapping it up for their range.

“Supermarkets usually like absolute consistency and the flavour to be exactly the same,” says Michael, “But we managed to persuade Waitrose and they bought into the idea, so our core range changes in its taste from batch to batch.”

The Waitrose deal means even more diversity in the routes to market Wiper & True have tried to ensure cover all areas of retail, rather than putting all their eggs in one basket, and another aspect of this

THERE WILL BE MORE AND MORE PEOPLE WHO ARE GOING TO WANT TO CHOOSE SOMETHING THAT SUITS THEIR ENVIRONMENTAL LEANINGS has been their wholesaler in London which specialises in high end restaurants. Wiper & True has always aimed for flavourful beers that can easily be matched with food, and would not look out of place on a Michelin Starred table, and this partnership has brought this to life with the beer now stocked by many of the top restaurants in the Capital.

The brewery is also exercising its experimental flair with a range of sours and barrel aged beers, among them one which harks back to Michael’s early days as a homebrewer and cider maker.

“My wife and I planted a cider orchard back in 2010 but it is too big to be a hobby and too small to be commercially viable,” he says. “So we have this 50 tree orchard in a field in Wiltshire which we now use at Wiper & True. We have done an apple and beer blend which we haven’t released yet but which has been aging for nearly three years, two years in barrel and this year in bottle, and we are going to release that this year as a 2016 vintage.

We are doing that every year now.”

The barrel aging project will be expanded once a new brewery site is found to grow capacity, with the current site being kept on and turned over to a much larger barrel room, a mixed fermentation brewery and expanded taproom.

Also on Michael’s list of business plans is a new focus from this year on sustainability, which he believes will become increasingly important to beer drinkers over the coming years.

“We are very focused on how we can make more environmentally conscious beer, and that is going to be the theme for the next few years,” says Michael. “We have been using 100% renewable energy since we started, we just haven’t been telling people we were doing it! We have just started to explain we do things like that, and we are going to be registering to make organic beers over the next few months and that should start in 2020.

“For us it is something we feel we have to do, and I think it is going to cost us more than the return to start with but I think as the market in craft beer grows and reaches a wider audience there will be more and more people who are going to want to choose something that suits their environmental leanings.”

The project will be overseen by a new Head of Sustainability – a role created for one of the directors – with a feasibility study underway to assess what options there are for making the current site more sustainable as well as planning for the new brewery and how they can create a new more environmentally friendly production facility and process in future. Michael is very upbeat about the challenges this presents, and also about the broader challenges of a highly competitive market: “The current challenges for us are really positive and exciting challenges and we are enjoying taking them on. It is largely around production and also as the sector expands there is more competition and a challenge around pricing and space on taps. We are not viewing that negatively, we feel very much poised to take on those challenges and there is still a lot of room for growth for us. The challenge for us as a team is keeping the balance of the company and keeping focused on the right things.”

Continued on page 31 WWW.SIBA.CO.UK

SIBA JOURNAL AUTUMN 2019

29

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MEET THE BREWER

THE NEIGHBOURHOOD HAS A REALLY LOVELY FEEL TO IT, AND A VERY SUPPORTIVE NETWORK

COMMUNITY FOCUS Michael Wiper on what community means to him and Wiper and True: “There are three strands of community for us that all interlink in some way. The first one is very local. We are in a community called St Weburghs in Bristol which has always had a reputation as being a very strong community area. The neighbourhood has a really lovely feel to it, and a very supportive network, and there is a row of shops and restaurants right by the brewery where everyone knows each other and the small businesses all support each other. There is an amazingly strong sense of community exactly where we are and it is one of those parts of the city where there are industrial estates surrounded by shops and houses which makes it a very vibrant area.

There is a city farm and lots of charity events and all kinds of things going on, so that is a really big part of what we have tried to do, to be a part of that through our taproom and opening our doors and getting involved in all the local events.

The other part is Bristol as a bigger environment, and we are very lucky to be a part of a vibrant city. Bristolians’ sense of independence and forging their own path means we get a lot of support from pubs and local consumers. There is a real desire for locally brewed beer over nationally or internationally brewed beer. We find it amazing when we go to the international beer festivals they have in Bristol and you see people queuing for the stands that serve Bristol Beer Factory or Wiper & True beers and we get chatting to people when there are other stands offering amazing beers from Denmark or all over the world and they say they want to support the local team! It is a humbling thing for them to be so passionate about their local team.

We also try and make sure we are part of the Bristol community as much as possible from the brewing perspective. So we network and have regular communication and do events together – we have a brewers’ Christmas party in Bristol where we all get together and it is a really nice sense of community. We also run consumer events for Bristol beer drinkers as much as possible too.

Then thirdly there is the more specialist beer community. People we are selling beer to who are focused on the attention to detail and the ingredients, and that might be events we do around the country and online through Untapped for example.

There is an overlap between them all but they can be quite distinct too.”

This year has seen a major change for the brewery with the move from bottles to cans completed in September and the installation of a new canning line to take over from the outdated bottling line.

Michael says of the move: “It has been a huge project and has affected every part of the business – from how we forecast our demand, to how we plan production, to the actual brewing process, to distribution, to storage. It has been a huge change for us. It was largely quality driven, we weren’t happy with the quality of our bottles so we would have had to either buy a new bottling line or a canning line. In the current market you’d have to be very confident in bottles to choose them over cans when growth in consumer demand for cans has been proven to be outstripping bottles.”

Looking ahead, Michael is confident and enthusiastic about the future for Wiper & True as it enters the next stage of its

development, and proud of what he has so far achieved growing the brewery from scratch, with the current business successfully fusing ideas from two very different parts of the industry.

“As we have evolved, one of the things we are trying to do is to fuse together two parts of the industry that we really like,” he says. “The craft side and the bigger side of brewing. There are parts of both sides we really like and parts we don’t, so we want to pick out the bits we enjoy the most – from the craft side it is about using the best possible ingredients, working to ensure the flavour is the most stand out thing, and from the bigger side of the industry it is about health and safety, food safety processes, efficiency and running a good balanced company. Our ambition is to bring those two things together.”

This may be a very different operation from the one that launched at a Bristol Christmas Market almost seven years

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ago, but the enthusiasm Michael has for experimentation and for what is going on in the industry around him has not diminished. He shares his excitement about the low alcohol movement, developments in barrel ageing, slow beer and specialist fermentation, production processes which obviously hark back to his days as a homebrewer. And although he does fall back on an old favourite for his desert island beer – Belgian classic Orval – he chooses it because of its ever-evolving nature - “it never gets boring”, as Michael puts it.

Finally, as our interview draws to a close, I ask Michael for the best piece of advice he was given when he was starting out, and he doesn’t miss a beat. “Probably ‘Don’t start a brewery!’,” he laughs. And I think beer lovers in Bristol and country-wide can be very grateful he didn’t follow that particular piece of advice.

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GUEST COLUMNIST

BUILDING BETTER COMMUNITIES

Our guest columnist for this issue, Jonny Garrett, co-founder of the Craft Beer Channel, takes a look at how community spirit sets our industry apart from others, and can help independent craft brewers thrive if they recognise the strength in numbers…

that. In a world where everything and everyone is at your fingertips, the pub is gloriously antiquated. You have to travel there, choose from a limited range, look people in the eye when you talk to them.

It’s everything a technologically advanced capitalist economy doesn’t want. But it was – and still is – where people meet, escape, share and overshare.

There aren’t many industries that could claim to have a community. It’s the kind of word that most sectors would use in times of crisis – perhaps in the face of new damaging legislation, or a slump in sales – but then in the good times go back to their dog-eat-dog default, taking bites out of margins and market share.

It is one of the few remaining public spaces in our lives, and brewers are lucky to have an inside track by producing the

Beer definitely has that element to it at its macro scale, but having so many small, independent breweries means we are blessed to be in an industry that is together in the good times. Beer is, of course, a social glue, but it goes deeper. It comes down to a love of the industry itself and how brewing connects with people and places in an increasingly globalised and digital world.

The beer community is actually far more likely to fall apart in the bad times. Duty reform has fractured us already, with the regionals preferring to fight the small guys not the big. The Portman Group regularly causes spats between those the rules benefit and those they hurt. And anyone who has been on Twitter will know that even the smallest upset can cause a seismic social shift. We could all do with remembering the benefits that our small industry has by being so close knit, and a lot of breweries need to work harder to make those connections work for them.

Like all great things should, let’s start at the pub. I always cringe when I hear the phrase “the pub is the original social network” because I know it’s better than

WE COULD ALL DO WITH REMEMBERING THE BENEFITS THAT OUR SMALL INDUSTRY HAS BY BEING SO CLOSE KNIT very product most people go there to consume. It’s the perfect place to build a community around a brand, which is exactly why so many regional brewers started pub estates in the first place.

The pub wasn’t just a revenue stream or a better margin, it was a place to encourage repeat custom, loyalty and ambassadorship around a brewery – and these ideas spread fast because people came here to share their thoughts and experiences. As well as that, is was a place to get direct feedback on their beers and branding.

We should use this model for our businesses, and build better communities around ourselves. Taprooms have brought the customer community even closer to us, and any brewery without a taproom is missing out on amazing margins and true interaction with their customer base.

Festivals allow brewers to interact with people outside their local market, to have

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vital conversations at the exact point where a drinker might come across their brand for the first time.

But for us to maintain the community we have built and benefitted from, we need to interact with each other too. These pubs, taprooms and festivals are all frequented by members of our industry and represent fantastic opportunities to connect, share ideas and even consider collaborations – one of the best ways to learn and grow together. Since the advent of digital media I think many breweries have become increasingly reluctant to meet up in person, getting out of their own breweries and frames of reference. Instead we think we can grow brands and communities in the digital space. We think we can resolve duty debate in 160 characters and placate a disappointed customer in one Facebook thread. Having an online presence is vital for the visibility and approachability of your brewery but if I have learned one thing through running a digital business, it’s that while social media is fantastic for creating a community, it is awful at maintaining it.

That takes physical effort and guess what – beer is still physical and one of the main drivers of community in the industry and our daily lives. The best way to solve any issues we have during the tough times is to meet at a pub, brewery, conference or festival. In digital times we need to make sure that we are still present, and still talking, and still drinking together.

Jonny Garrett is an award-winning beer writer and film maker based in London. He's also co-founder of the Craft Beer Channel, Youtube's biggest beer and food network with over 65,000 subscribers and 3 million views.

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THE

BIG

INTERVIEW

JULES GRAY, OWNER OF THE HOP HIDEOUT AND DIRECTOR OF SHEFFIELD BEER WEEK

Community and family are at the heart of Jules Gray’s connection to the beer world she loves. She grew up in County Durham, where her mother was a beer drinker and she was introduced to the traditional ales that were her first experience of the sector during meals out at the many family friendly country pubs in the area. Her social life centred on the music scene, another sector synonymous with pubs, bars and beer, and she went on to work behind the bar in a variety of social clubs, pubs and nightclubs. But it was not until she moved to Leeds in the early 2000s, when continental beers were starting to explode onto the scene, that Jules realised there was a world of taste and flavour outside the traditional brown ales of her youth and she began to seek out more unusual beers and visit festivals to learn more about the category.

After a stint at Molson Coors, where she gained a greater understanding of the supply chain and wider beer market,

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SIBA JOURNAL AUTUMN 2019

Jules was set on a career in beer, but realised working for a brewing giant was not satisfying her entrepreneurial flair or allowing her to fully explore the beer world she loved.

She decided, along with her husband, to take the plunge in 2013 with the launch of their own small independent beer shop and tasting room, Hop Hideout in Sheffield. From humble beginnings in a small corner of an antiques centre, the enterprise took off and is now thriving as part of Kommune, a social dining space in Sheffield’s iconic Castle House building, where she works closely with the other small independent operators sharing the space. Jules also oversees the city’s Beer Week, a celebration of Sheffield’s burgeoning beer scene and the community it has brought together. The SIBA Journal’s Caroline Nodder spoke to Jules to learn more about the challenges of building a small independent craft beer business from scratch and find out why community means so much to her…

THE BIG INTERVIEW

How and why did you first get interested in beer?

“I was born in County Durham and spent most of my life there, although I did live in London for a bit, and I have always been around beer. My mum has always drunk beer. And we would go to the pub for family meals so beer was always there.

My first job was working behind a bar, so I worked in the pub industry from the age of 18 really. My first job was actually in a social club, but I have worked in pubs, clubs, nightclubs and festivals, all very varied establishments. So beer was always very much there and also part of my social life. Music was my big passion, and I found people I met who were into good music always seemed to be into good beer too. There seems to be a correlation between the style of beer you like and the type of music you listen to. But there were a couple of pivotal moments for me really.

In the early 2000s I moved to Leeds for a job and around that time continental beers were a big thing. You started seeing Belgian beers, world lagers, German wheat beers, and you would see Duvel and Chouffe, you would start to see Orval, and that moment in time made me realise there was far more to beer than what I had grown up with. Growing up it was all ales, and a lot of the pubs in County Durham were tied houses, so we used to go to a Sam Smiths pub that probably had the best beers, but it was generally all national ales then. I realised in Leeds there were all these different beers from around the world with all these different styles and flavours.

And that started me on my journey of discovering the wider beer culture that was out there. In 2007 I started working for a large multi-national brewery, so I went on another trajectory where beer was becoming more than a hobby. I was working at Molson Coors in the sales and

technical office in Leeds, so having worked behind the bar I was now working on the team taking calls from those people and giving advice on cellar equipment, sending out engineers, and that kind of thing. And I then saw the whole industry suddenly appearing before me. I worked for them for about seven years and ended up moving to Birmingham for a job at head office in Burton-Upon-Trent and at that point I was going to a lot more beer festivals, typically CAMRA beer festivals, very much wanting to discover more about all the beer styles out there.”

I WAS HUGELY INSPIRED

BY BEER FROM AROUND THE WORLD, SO ALTHOUGH I LOVED ALE I DIDN’T WANT THAT TO BE THE FOCUS OF THE BUSINESS. When did the Hop Hideout launch and what were your aims for it?

“Hop Hideout launched in November 2013. The last couple of years I was working at Molson Coors I was working on a very large systems implementation project for Burton Brewery, which was quite stressful in a company that size. And I felt I wasn’t being allowed to flourish to my full ability, I wanted to get into the brewery but I was on this side project and there seemed to be a lot of barriers which at the time seemed to be difficult to challenge, as a woman particularly. I just thought I’d go and launch my own thing, and be my own boss. At that time there was a real growth in the number of

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female entrepreneurs, probably because of the barriers they were coming up against in big business, and I found quite a lot of support in small business networks and female entrepreneurship groups. I was very passionate about beer, reading everything I could and going to events, and originally my idea was to open up a micro-pub. But I diverged away from that because I felt the essence of that wasn’t where I wanted to go. I was hugely inspired by beer from around the world, so although I loved ale I didn’t want that to be the focus of the business. I have to be honest I was thinking about working hours too. I didn’t want to be somewhere until 11pm or 12am at night, and with the growth of social media and online and the ability to ship packages all around the country I thought there was the seed of a business there which would combine all of my interests. It has been about small organic growth since we launched in 2013, I was still working full time at that stage, and we started on a very small amount of money saved from work. We rented a space in an antiques centre and we were only open Friday, Saturday and Sunday – very much testing the market and seeing if the interest was there. In March 2015 we moved to a café next door which had moved, and that was finally my vision of what I wanted it to be. We had the taps and the tasting room, and it was very much inspired by going to Belgium and seeing their beer shops that just have a table in the middle where you can sit and try the beers. We were very excited to have that space and be able to develop what we wanted to. But it was still really just me and my husband who worked there, we had a few other staff but only really part-time. I’m now currently researching and looking to take on a few permanent staff. It has taken five years and two or three moves to get there!”

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THE BIG INTERVIEW How did your latest move to Kommune come about?

“We closed the Abbeydale Road location at the end of last year and then we were offered the opportunity to be part of a food hall in the city centre of Sheffield. We opened at the end of March this year and it combines a lot of things I have been developing and thinking about for quite some time - evolving to make ourselves much more accessible to a lot more people, not just being in the craft beer bubble. Obviously I am completely grateful and humbled by the number of regulars that support us, which did translate into a crowdfunding campaign when we wanted to fund the move. We had over 150 people supporting us, and have raised over £6,000 and that was a model where people got something for their money, they weren’t investing in my business. So we were selling t-shirts, and tote bags, and beer vouchers so people got something tangible for pledging and helping us with our move. It was very humbling. The food hall is called Kommune and they are bringing the best of Sheffield’s independents together. So I’m in there, there’s a great independent book shop called La Biblioteka and we are actually doing a lot more together. Sometimes it can be quite lonely running a small independent shop and in Kommune I have found other managers there and owners there and I can go to them and ask for their advice. We have always been quite into the beer and food thing too, and one of the big draws of going to the food hall was that there were going to be 10 independent kitchens there too that I can do a lot of collaborations with. It does take time for things to settle down but we recently did our first beer and food sit down event called ‘Pass the Peas’ which was an informal sit down with brewers and food producers to chat about the pairings and we had about 15 for that.

Also one of my other big reasons for the move was to focus on quality, and we are now 100% refrigerated. We have a walk-in cold store downstairs and fridges in the shop. We have four beers on draught and about 200 in the fridges and I have started to offer a paired food suggestion, not with every beer, but with the regular core beers.”

SOMETIMES IT CAN BE QUITE LONELY RUNNING A SMALL INDEPENDENT SHOP AND IN KOMMUNE I HAVE FOUND OTHER MANAGERS THERE AND OWNERS THERE AND I CAN GO TO THEM AND ASK FOR THEIR ADVICE

COMMUNITY FOCUS What, to you, does ‘community’ mean within the beer world?

“It is very much tied in with emotion and relationships and experience. I had a look at the dictionary definition of community, and it has a few different strands to it. You have a group of people having a particular characteristic in common, the condition or sharing or having certain attitudes or interests in common, similarity or identity. At the heart of it I do think there are beer lovers and beer enthusiasts and that really pulls people together in that shared passion. I am sure everyone in the beer world has probably had that experience where you go to a different city or you go on holiday somewhere and on the top of your priority list is discovering a great beer place. So you go in there and then you often get talking to the locals there, and they suggest another great place and take you there and three or four hours later you’ve been to two or three bars or brewery taprooms with people you’ve never met before.

You’ve found this common shared passion and interest. You can see it even more tangibly through Facebook forums, there are a few I am a member of, and if we are talking about community then everyone within that community are still individuals, not everybody is going to get along, but you do see this overall helpful, supportive community. There is a general ethos of treat others as you’d like to be treated.

I still think the great thing about independent business, and the craft beer and independent brewing industry, is that it is full of individuals and that is great to see, and you have that vibrancy and that is hugely interesting, but that doesn’t mean you can’t then come together through your shared love for beer. That is not just the flavour of beer, it is the history, and sharing knowledge. I think it is that world of discovery people connect intimately and more deeply over. The other big thing is about investing in the local community and people. With jobs, and keeping the high street vibrant, footfall, the local economy, people often forget the real value that these places add to the local community.”

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Continued on page 39

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37

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THE BIG INTERVIEW

How do you work with local groups, customers and businesses?

“We have done a lot with the local community in the past. We have previously supported a local professional mountain biker called Steve Peat who does an annual mountain bike event. So we have donated beer to be used at the event for various things, the last time was to say thanks to the volunteers for helping. It is a big event, there are about 3,000 people who go up to Grenoside Woods in Sheffield and watch the downhill mountain bike race. The area where we used to be based in Sheffield was in Netheredge/Abbeydale and Netheredge community group have an annual festival. We always used to run an event for the festival, so we’ve done meet the brewers, and Melissa Cole came and did a talk for one of the festivals, and I did a ‘women and beer’ talk that was really popular actually. Abbeydale is also known as the antiques quarter, so we used to do the antiques quarter market, we have done the Sheffield Christmas market, and we have been involved in the Sheffield Food Festival not just taking a stand but we did demos, partnered with a local bar, hosted about 50 people in there. Then the monthly running club we do has been going about four years, and we also do cycling socials.”

Has social media changed the way craft beer shops and brewers are communicating with their customers?

“It is undeniable that social media has had a huge impact. Even looking at Instagram, for example. We were quite early adopters of Instagram, not because I had any inkling it was going to be such a huge platform, but just because I really enjoyed taking photos and my partner was a professional photographer so our website is very visually led with beautiful pictures of beer rather than the text you see on old school websites. So being an early adopter is perhaps why we have

got a large following on Instagram, and I will now have people who walk in to the shop and say, ‘oh I’ve been following you on Instagram and I wanted to come and visit you!’. So there is that immediate return. It can be hugely rewarding if you’re running a successful campaign and lots of people engage and you’re talking to them and then you see them coming in and buying things. I have literally posted something on social media and seen sales come in on the website, it is that immediate. But you do have to be careful you don’t take yourself too seriously and remind yourself your value isn’t defined by numbers of likes and things like that.

It can be something you can be sucked into in a negative way quite easily. We just use three platforms, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. But I try to use them in different ways. Sometimes I’ll do the same post across all three but other times I find Twitter is more ‘in the moment’, it’s about talking to people and networking and doing research, Facebook and Instagram allow you to have a bit more of a visual and longer post and go more in-depth about a brewer or a beer and Facebook is great for events. I find that is a great way to tell people what is going on.”

You are also the Director of Sheffield Beer Week, how did that come about and what are your aims for the event?

“Sheffield Beer Week is an annual event we run in March, and it was originally partly intertwined with SIBA’s BeerX when that was based in Sheffield. There were multiple inspirations for it. I started thinking about the idea in early 2014, and it was inspired by seeing all the US beer weeks and also the Norwich City of Ale event, and Dawn and Frances and Phil [the organisers] have been really great and really supportive actually. Then I had a trip to Belgium and saw how engaged the tourism board was in recognising how important the beer and brewing industry is. Over here it does vary, but some local

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councils are very careful about their involvement with anything that is alcoholled. So obviously at all the beer weeks we do talk about the quality of the product, and at Sheffield Beer Week we have always had three key strands, which are community, heritage and beer and food.

It is about sharing the right ethos. When you see in the UK media anything about alcohol and excessive drinking there is always a glass of beer pictured with it, and I wanted to put positive stories out there.

There are so many positive stories, brewers opening up in previously derelict parts of the city, boosting the local economy, stories that weren’t being told and I wanted to have a platform to share those. I also felt there was a great scene in Sheffield that no one outside of the city had really heard about. The Kelham Island Ale Trail had been going since the early 90s so things had always been happening but I felt it would be stronger coming together and having a common voice. The tie in with SIBA was that there were all these thousands of people coming to the city, why just go to the conference [BeerX], why not get them out into the pubs and really share the city with them? And it seemed to work really successfully, especially the last year before SIBA moved [BeerX] to Liverpool there was a huge amount of support and focus on local pubs and SIBA shared and promoted that. So for someone like me that has a very tiny organic budget for Sheffield Beer Week that was a huge benefit and I was humbled SIBA wanted to do that. So when the move was announced there was that thought about whether Sheffield Beer Week would be sustainable without it, and I put some feelers out and some questionnaires out and everyone came back and said 100% continue with it, so that was a real positive that it has kept its momentum even with a large beer conference leaving the city. And it has continued to grow.”

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THE BIG INTERVIEW

Photo: Mark Newton (IG @marknewtonphotos)

THERE ARE PEOPLE OUT THERE THAT GIVE YOU THE CONFIDENCE TO FOLLOW YOUR DREAM AND YOUR VISION Photo: Mark Newton (IG @marknewtonphotos)

Are festivals like yours crucial to building interest and community around craft beer?

“The number of beer weeks has grown and they are not all in cities. There is now the possibility for beer weeks to happen on a smaller more local level and it just needs to have a certain number of businesses, breweries, passionate enthusiasts, publicans, beer shop owners, not even just necessarily people from within the industry I guess, and I do see it growing. But it will be interesting to see what ethos those weeks take on. We are very much about supporting independents and that is a key part of our ethos. I do think these event-led areas are critical to opening up beer not just to people who are already into it and want to discover more, but to completely new people. It is often those conversations over a beer that people remember, it is more of a genuine interaction and people do value that.”

One of the key growth areas for consumers is around ‘experiences’, how are you seeing the craft beer market evolve to meet that demand?

“I do quite a lot of beer tastings. The minimum you can book is for two people, and I get anywhere from two to groups of 30, but its typically between two and four people per session. And I will get people who are wanting to discover beer for the

first time. There are not a lot of people doing that, I think in Sheffield it is just us and BrewDog, but it is one of the really successful key areas. I allow a welcoming space and say to people at the beginning they can ask anything they want, and you can make people feel comfortable, then when they feel comfortable then accessibility and engagement really opens up. A couple of years ago we did a Groupon offer for a beer tasting, and you’re never quite sure how successful these campaigns are going to be, but one of the reasons I ran it on Groupon was because sometime being a specialist place people might feel uncomfortable or that they don’t know enough to come in. So I was trying to break down those barriers and get people through Hop Hideout’s doors that might not have known we were there.

And I ended up selling 300 beer tastings which was quite significant! It nearly broke me! I did something like 20 beer tastings for three months, every week! What I found really interesting about it as well was breaking down people’s assumptions about who drinks beer, who likes beer and who works in beer.”

Which brewers worldwide are you currently excited by and why?

“UK wise, I have to mention Saint Mars of the Desert, a new Sheffield brewery, a husband and wife team who obviously come with years of experience having had a huge brewery behind them, Pretty

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Things, and I’m really excited they are in Sheffield. I’d also say Burning Sky and Mark Tranter who seems a very unassuming and humble guy getting on doing his thing. There are people out there that give you the confidence to follow your dream and your vision and he is one of those people. People like Yonder Brewing and Blending and Little Earth Project are exciting. And I am also interested in Lost & Grounded brewing really solid lager which is a style that is very underrated in this country. Around the world I am excited by brewers like Tired Hands in Philadelphia and Fonta Flora in North Carolina. Fonta Flora are really connecting with local growers and farmers which fits with the whole trend of provenance and terroir.

Then a big Belgian reference point for me is Drie Fonteinen, I am really excited about a lot of the thinking and where they are taking lambic beer.”

What is your favourite beer and where would you most like to drink it?

“I would have to go for a Belgian lambic and gueuze. So I’d probably be drinking some Drie Fonteinen in the Lambik-Odroom tasting room, and if I could have some food with it I would have it with a cheeseboard!”

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Omnipollo, based in Stockholm, Sweden, has re-written the rules around craft beer since it was launched in 2010 as a partnership between brewer Henok Fentie and artist Karl Grandin who had a shared vision of changing the perception of beer — forever. The beers Omnipollo produce are as varied as the striking cans, bottles and fonts that graphic artist Karl designs to go with them, and both founders take inspiration from the world around them, rather than looking at what is going on within the craft beer sector. This makes Omnipollo a very exciting partner in the collaborations that it takes part in across the globe to produce its beers.

Having no permanent site, all the beers are collaborations, and this gives the pair freedom to explore different markets and experiment with different ingredients. The resulting beers can be one-offs for festivals and events or form part of the regular range Omnipollo sells all over the World.

As a joint and equal partnership between a

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AROUND THE WORLD

SIBA JOURNAL AUTUMN 2019

brewer and an artist the Omnipollo creative process is unique, encompassing a range of pop cultural expressions such as music, fashion and art, and by travelling the globe the pair are able to meet and exchange ideas with brewers on every continent, which they say keeps them ‘curious, grounded, and tuned in’. They have frequently been listed among the best breweries in the world within the beer media, and with innovation like that seen with their Milkshake IPA, which combines lactose to create an incredible creamy effect, they have made a name for themselves pushing the boundaries of what is possible in modern brewing. But while experimentation is part of the everyday at Omnipollo, their focus on quality, especially when using different breweries for their production, has impressively not wavered. The SIBA Journal’s Editor Caroline Nodder asked Henok for his thoughts on the current beer market, where he gets his inspiration for Omnipollo beers, and if he would ever settle down and build a permanent site…

AROUND THE WORLD

Brewery Basics NAME: OMNIPOLLO FOUNDED: 2010 LOCATION: STOCKHOLM OWNER(S): HENOK FENTIE AND KARL GRANDIN NUMBER OF STAFF: 11 AT HQ, PLUS 30 AT THE BARS KEY BEER BRANDS: AON PECAN MUDCAKE STOUT, LEVON PALE ALE, FATAMORGANA IPA, BIANCA MANGO LASSI GOSE ANNUAL PRODUCTION: 1.5 MILLION LITRES WORLDWIDE KEY EXPORT MARKETS: US, CHINA, THE UK, JAPAN AND FRANCE

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AROUND THE WORLD When did you first get interested in beer and brewing?

“I started brewing at home in 2008 after having worked for a pub chain specialising in craft beer in Sweden.”

How did you come to found Omnipollo and how has the business grown since then?

“We tried scaling a home brew recipe and that became our first commercial product. We grew slowly and steadily with that one beer. Through collaborations and continued explorations of brewing and beers, we have grown year-on-year at a steady pace over 10 years. In the last two years we have really taken off.”

What is the ethos behind Omnipollo and its beers?

“To challenge the status quo and try to elevate the experience.”

How many beers do you now produce?

“We have made 276 beers to date, out of which approximately 10 feature regularly.”

What do you do differently at Omnipollo?

“We think outside the beer and don’t have a brewery. We brew at 12 different breweries across the world and try to sell our beers as locally as possible. As such, all of our beers are collaborations.”

As a partnership between art and beer your business model is unique, what benefits has that brought?

TO CHALLENGE THE STATUS QUO AND TRY TO ELEVATE THE EXPERIENCE

“The biggest benefit as I see it is that the art works as a segue into other pop-cultural expressions, allowing us to present beer in a seemingly different setting.”

Do you enjoy being a gypsy brewer, and have you ever had plans for a permanent site?

“I enjoy it very much, exchanging ideas and experiences with different people is what drives us forward. We will probably open a brewery one day, it would be nice to have a home.”

Your beers are collaborative projects, what is the thinking behind each project?

“It depends on what we are trying to achieve. If the beer is brewed for a festival, a one-off, we might approach it differently than when it is brewed to scale. We like drinking beers differently depending on the setting where we enjoy them. High risk-taking, and experimentation is always a part of what we do, especially when we brew more expressive styles, like Imperial stouts, fruited sours or culinary IPAs, whereas brewing beer for everyday consumption, such as a pilsner, often requires us to temper ourselves and absorb and honor the craft and listening to brewers that have more prior experience than we do.”

What are the aims of your Omnipolloscope project and how did that come about?

“We wanted to create a global beer festival and by collaborating with some of the best breweries in the world, we could showcase their excellence on a global scale, by brewing five beers and releasing them in 25 countries. All were released in a synchronised event on the 29th of May.”

Your brand and design really stand out in the market, what is the ethos behind that and how do your designs come about?

“The artist Karl Grandin works very independently and approaches his art based on his own inner universe. Often or always very separately from the beer universe we operate in.”

How has your home beer market in Sweden developed in recent years?

“It has exploded. When we started Omnipollo in 2010 it was hard to get a craft beer anywhere else than a specialised beer bar, which there were very few of.”

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AROUND THE WORLD

What current challenges do you face as a beer producer?

“We export and sell our beer in 45+ counties. Maintaining the highest possible quality and freshness of our beers is a constant challenge. We are constantly scrutinising and developing our process to make sure Omnipollo beers are as fresh as possible.”

What is your view of the UK beer market?

“The UK market is extremely interesting. Not only for us, but for craft beer all over Europe. England has a long brewing tradition and when paired with innovation, anything can happen. Nowhere in the world do we get as much feedback as from the UK. There is also a very engaged base of beer drinkers.”

What does community mean to you at Omnipollo given your Worldwide reach?

“It means a lot and the fact that we act on a global scale means that we can find more freaks like us around the world to connect with.”

What excites you most about craft beer?

“The endless possibilities. No beverage to my knowledge is as versatile as beer. I struggle to come up with a concept, in any area of pop-culture or the culinary world, that could not be incorporated into a beer.”

You have collaborated all over the World, do you have any favorite collaborations?

“This would be like choosing a favourite child! We put equal amounts of effort into all our collaborations and therefore love them all equally. The beer Lorelei stands out, a collab between a British home brewer and Siren, that ended up being the second highest rated porter in the world. That was cool.”

What’s new at Omnipollo for 2019/20?

“Everything. Our beers keep getting more complicated as the years pass and 2019/20 is no different. Expect next level in everything from concept to execution.”

Who do you most admire in the brewing sector worldwide, and why?

“I admire Dirk Naudts at De Proefbrouwerij. We have worked with him from day one. Without him there would be no Omnipollo.”

Where do you get your ideas and inspiration from?

“I personally get a lot of inspiration from music and the culinary world. I would say that for the most part our beers lie somewhere in between these two expressions. Another thing that is close to our hearts is politics, but we try to focus on the beers for the most part.”

What are your three favourite beers worldwide?

“If I was stuck on a desert island, I would bring a pilsner from Andreas Gänsteller, an IPA from Monkish and an Imperial stout from 3 Sons.”

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BUSINESS PROFILE

GOING SO LOW Most small brewers are certainly now aware of, and many are already involved in developing and launching, a beer for the growing low and no alcohol beer market in the UK. But few can say they had even considered the idea back in 2016, when Rob Fink and James Kindred launched Big Drop Brewing to blaze a path into this as yet unexploited part of the category. The idea for the brewery was a simple one, to make a great tasting range of beers but all with an ABV of 0.5%.

It was born partly from the lifestyle change Rob had undergone after having his first child. Working as a City lawyer at the time, he temporarily gave up drinking alcohol but was still often to be found meeting clients in pubs and restaurants.

Not wanting to drink fizzy soft drinks for hours on end, he found the low alcohol beer option available to him in most venues was one mass produced lager – a style he did not enjoy. Seeing a gap in the market, he teamed up with old school friend James, who was at a similar stage in his own life, to plan a daring launch into this almost uncharted part of the market. Big Drop’s launch turned out not only to be timed to perfection as consumer interest in no and low alcohol beer started to grow, but the brewery has forged a path many others are now following. And with reports suggesting no and low alcohol beers are growing exponentially in popularity, three years later Rob and James are now riding a wave that shows no sign of subsiding any time soon. Caroline Nodder from the SIBA Journal caught up with the Big Drop founders to hear more about their ground-breaking business…

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BUSINESS PROFILE

Brewery Basics NAME: BIG DROP BREWING FOUNDED: NOVEMBER 2016 LOCATION: BERMONDSEY, LONDON OWNER(S): ROB FINK, JAMES KINDRED AND INVESTORS CAPACITY: CONTRACT BREWING SO UNLIMITED STAFF: 12 KEY BEERS: STOUT, PALE ALE, CITRA IPA AND LAGER (ALL 0.5% ABV) PRODUCTION(HL) AND SPLIT (CASK, KEG, SMALL PACK): 13,000 HL SMALL PACK (2020 FORECAST)

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KEY EXPORT MARKETS: SWEDEN, NETHERLANDS, FINLAND AND CANADA

Tell me a bit about your background and the background to the business.

digital point of view.”

Rob: “The idea came to me when I was working as a lawyer in the City – I had my own law firm. I started it with one other guy and between the two of us he would do most of the legal work and I would do the client and business development. The City of London, particularly in insurance where I worked at the time, was a very face to face industry and a lot of that time is spent in pubs and bars and restaurants just developing your network. That included quite a lot of drinking, but then in 2014 I had my first son, and I just decided to knock it on the head for a little while.

I still had to go to the pub, because that was my job, networking with brokers and underwriters, so I would go to the pub and with the best will in the world you can’t drink orange and lemonade or pints of Coca-Cola for hours on end, and I didn’t want to drink water if I was standing around chatting to people about work so I would drink alcohol free beer. I am not a beer geek by any stretch but I would go to the bar and the ‘craft beer revolution’ had changed the landscape, you could buy a dozen or two dozen styles and types of beer from around the world, every flavour and style, an amazing selection, but then you would say ‘have you got an alcohol free beer?’ and they would look at you a bit funny and point at a mass produced macro lager in the corner. So I drank it. But I’m not a lager drinker anyway, I like to drink dark beers in the Winter and pale ales in the Summer. And I started thinking ‘why is that? How has there been so much innovation in beer but no or low alcohol beer has just been ignored?’. It is obviously a beer people drink because it wouldn’t be in the fridge if it wasn’t but no one had innovated it. So then James and I were old school friends and our family lives had reached the same stage at that time.”

James: “I spent almost 20 years as a graphic designer working on FMCG brands and ran a couple of my own agencies, then a few years prior to launching Big Drop I set up a technology company looking at building hospitality software for small accommodation owners. I stepped away from that nearly two years ago to look after Big Drop and be the brand guardian for the business in a bigger capacity. Originally Rob approached me with the idea of coming up with a stout. Then working with Johnny [Clayton] our head brewer and I slotted into the business from a design and

Rob: “It you wanted to look at Crowdfunding an alcohol free brewery now you might well be able to do it, but three years ago everyone was still looking at me very strangely when I was talking about this idea. And I didn’t have the capital to build a brewery, it was very unlikely I was going to be able to raise the capital to build a brewery, and we were, we are, the first company to dedicate ourselves to alcohol free beer. So at the time I thought either this is going to fail spectacularly, so if I have a brewery and fixed assets I’ll be left with a brewery that I don’t need. Or it would succeed, and if it succeeded it would succeed spectacularly, there wouldn’t be a middle ground. And if it succeeded spectacularly then any brewery I was able to build three years ago would quickly become redundant anyway.

It was 2014 when I first had the idea and it took a good couple of years for me to get anywhere with it because I couldn’t work out how to overcome the hurdle of needing to brew beer but not having a brewery, and initially not needing to brew lots of beer. I came across a company called UBREW that have a railway arch in Bermondsey with a 700l kit and you pay them a small fee, pay for your ingredients and you can brew 2,000 bottles, after wastage. It was just contract brewing on a small scale, and I was still working as a lawyer at the time. We started doing R&D brews in September 2016 and the first batches were released the end of November 2016. By May 2017 I had quit the law to go full time with Big Drop and at that time we were brewing 2,500l batches a month, then within a year we were doing 100hl. We outgrew UBREW in about four months so we now brew at a number of larger sites, we brew at Hepworths in Sussex and we are about to start brewing with Fourpure in Bermondsey. We have a small brewery in Devon we use for smaller batches and then outside the UK we have just signed terms with a brewer in Melbourne and in Toronto, and we want to move the beer we brew for Europe into Europe.”

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BUSINESS PROFILE

THE DIFFICULT THING IS TO COMPLETE THE BREWING PROCESS AND KEEP THE ABV AT 0.5%

What challenges did you face in developing a portfolio of 0.5% beers?

Rob: “We decided early on that our key goal was that we wanted to make great beer. But the hardest thing is to make great beer that happens to be low/no alcohol. And actually the first beer, the stout, wasn’t that difficult. Johnny [the head brewer] nailed that in three or four pilot brews. The really difficult bit as we have now discovered were the light beers. Trying to brew a lager, trying to brew a sour, is really difficult. Those were the technical challenges. We brew to strength – so we brew it just like any normal beer – we don’t hold the fermentation or extract the alcohol. So the difficult thing is to complete the brewing process and keep the ABV at 0.5%. From a sales perspective the challenge three years ago was turning up at pubs and beer shops and people were asking ‘what’s the point of that?’!”

James: “One of the things we learnt when talking to consumers as well three years ago was that if you go up to them, at a show for example, and say ‘do you want to try my alcohol free beer?’ there is a degree of hesitance there. A massive reluctance to try it because the mass produced macro lagers are controlling that conversation. But if you say to someone ‘do you want to try our award-winning craft beer?’ they will try it, and then you can tell them it’s 0.5% ABV and people are much more surprised. The stigma is reducing but there is that element to overcome.”

What are your aspirations for the business?

Rob: “We definitely want to continue to be seen as the market leader in the UK in this sector and continue the fantastic expansion we’ve had in the UK. But Scandinavia has been really good to us in terms of export, and there are great opportunities

there. They are generally much more relaxed about alcohol free beer as a social drink than people in the UK are but for us the big audacious goal is in Canada – we are live in Canada now – then Australia I think is ready for it and we have signed terms with a brewing partner over there, and we have gone into Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea. So the opportunity is enormous.

I think if we continue doing what we are doing we have the opportunity to be a world beating brand and that’s where I want to take it.”

How would you describe your brewing ethos?

Rob: “The first beer, the stout, was one that I wanted to drink, because I could not find an alcohol free stout, and stout is my favourite style of beer. The next one, the pale ale, was dictated by beer shops – it was beer shops that took it most of the time, pubs were completely ambivalent and the supermarkets hadn’t cottoned on yet. Then after that we tried to listen to consumers on Twitter, emails we were getting, asking for different styles of beer.

The sour beer for example, we had a couple of versions before we got it right, but sales were increasing and more and more people were asking for it. It is about trying to listen to people and work out what gaps there are in our portfolio.”

James: “We have two different ranges, internally we call them the core and the crafted range, and it depends on where they are going really. The larger sellers like the pale and the stout then we brew smaller amounts of the sour and the brown ale and we’re about to bring a golden ale out as well.”

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BUSINESS PROFILE

COMMUNITY FOCUS What does community mean to Big Drop?

James: “There is no bricks and mortar brewery or brewing team in place as it would be traditionally.

But I think internally as the company stands we work very closely with a very strong sense of work ethic and everyone looks out for each other in a way you wouldn’t necessarily think you’d have within a company that contract brews. Outside that we try and maintain a really strong community with our partners, distributors, wholesalers and pub chains we work with. Everyone has access to a partner portal through our website that we try and use as a communication device so everyone knows if we are doing a special edition brew, or there is a new format coming out, and we are there to support them with point of sale or whatever they need. Then we have a wider community on social media and we are far more active than a lot of the other no/low brewers out there in listening to our community if they have an issue or something is out of stock or they have a question about ingredients. We are always on hand to answer and we try not to make it a broadcasting channel, it is a two way conversation and listen to ideas they might have on our brewing direction. We don’t sit in a silo and make up who we think our audience is, it is always about listening and giving people the chance to get in touch.”

You are leading the market in the no/low alcohol arena, how are you seeing consumers embracing this?

Rob: “It has changed. But I am not sure it is actually consumer attitudes that have changed. It is a bit of a virtuous circle. There was always a demand for this stuff but no one was necessarily jumping up and down demanding it in a pub or a shop – I think it is more a change of attitude among wholesalers for example. One wholesaler just turned me down point blank at the beginning, they said there was no demand for it, then eventually they took 20 cases, and they were flying out! We sell pallets and pallets and pallets of beer to these guys now every month. That is an attitude change on their part I think rather than a big attitude change on the part of the consumer. It you give people these options, they will buy them.”

James: “No and low alcohol is no longer seen as a consolation prize anymore. You don’t have to go to a pub and drink a Coke or a mass produced derivative lager. The choice is there so you are levelling the playing field with more options and taking away the feeling that you’re not able to enjoy your evening because you are on the back burner with your drinks choices.”

What are the main challenges you are facing at the moment?

Rob: “In the shorter term it is continuing to work with the on trade to convince them that offering - not just Big Drop although that would be lovely – but offering a wider choice of quality no and low alcohol drinks is of benefit to their business. In the slightly longer term the big challenge will be managing our overseas territories from a distance and making sure we are not assuming just because something works in the UK it is going to work in Australia, for example. Making sure we are producing the right beers for all those markets from a distance will a challenge definitely.”

Where are you investing this year?

Rob: “Investment this year will largely go into the UK in sales and marketing and product development. The launches we will do in Canada and Australia will require some investment but we will probably do it on a slightly smaller scale. Similar to the scale we did it in the UK a couple of years ago. We could quite easily lose a lot of money by pumping it into other markets without doing some carefully selected things first.”

Are there any mistakes you’ve made that you have learned from?

James: “One of the things we have learnt is about time and turnaround on packaging regulations. Terminology in different markets is very different. So you can call our beers alcohol free in Europe [the EU defines ‘alcohol free’ as 0.5% ABV or less], but you can’t call it alcohol free on a label over here [UK regulations define ‘alcohol free’ as less than 0.05% ABV], there is also different terminology for Australia and Canada, so it can be a very long process to put a label on a beer and get it compliant. It’s particularly difficult within alcohol free where no one has really done it before.

All the previous products have been 0.0%, so we have really pushed at the boundaries of what the rules are – not in terms of wanting to break the rules but we have had lawyers scratching their heads not really knowing what the answer is. Canada has been a nightmare. It took us a year to get labels signed off because their legislation is not geared up for this issue.”

Rob: “The other things I would do differently in those new markets is actually invest in capacity beforehand. So over here I didn’t really know if it was going to work, so I was never able to turn up to a brewery with a 100hl capacity and say that I knew in six months’ time I’d be selling 200hl a month and enter into an agreement to future proof the brand. We had to go through a lot of smaller breweries very quickly, whereas what I’ve done in Australia is enter into terms with the brewing partner so they can provide us with the capacity I think we’re going to need in the next couple of years.”

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BUSINESS PROFILE

How does your business model differ as a result of the low alcohol products?

WE USE DIFFERENT TYPES OF GRAINS AND WE USE MORE GRAINS THAN YOU WOULD EXPECT TO FIND IN A NORMAL BEER.

Rob: “Overall, it doesn’t particularly differ - we are a beer brand and we make beer.

There is no duty on it, so we definitely have less of an administrative burden, in terms of having to use HMRC registered warehouses, that’s not an issue for us. There is no duty when you export it, so it is all a lot easier. But a lot of the conversations initially with wholesalers was around price – they would say as we weren’t paying duty the price should be lower. But the way we compensate for the lack of alcohol in our beer is that we use different types of grains and we use more grains than you would expect to find in a normal beer. So the cost of our ingredients is quite a lot higher than you might expect to find and also, apart from the lager, which is now vegan, we use lactose. Which gives the beer the body you’re missing in a low ABV beer, and again that is a cost you would not expect to find in a normal beer. So the savings in duty are largely offset by that.

People still expect to pay less for an alcohol free beer than they do for a normal beer, but it is noteworthy that you have a lot of craft sodas these days that are more expensive per 100ml than a Big Drop beer, and whilst I’m not disputing the effort that goes into that drink, we have a full brewing process, so to charge less for our beer than for their drink is difficult for us.”

Do you have any retail sites currently or plans to develop a retail side?

Rob: “My view is that the point about Big Drop is choice. Giving people who aren’t drinking alcohol more choice. But if you are going out into town with friends the chances are some of them are going to be drinking alcohol so if you tell them you want to go somewhere where there is no alcohol at all I am not sure how they are going to feel about that. Although there is a lot we need to talk about in terms of partnerships with people in direct retail and whether that might work.”

How important are sustainability and environmental issues to your business?

in the world. How much do I care these days that the beer I like is brewed at the brewery it was created in, as compared to being brewed near to me so it is fresh and you haven’t pumped all that carbon into the atmosphere getting it to me?”

Are you attracting Generation Z drinkers with your no alcohol product?

James: “We have a very wide range of drinkers. One of the questions we initially asked ourselves is who our audience is at Big Drop and it is still a question we ask ourselves because there is an ebb and flow according to who we are talking to and what medium we are using to talk to them. We do have an audience of 18-24-yearolds on social media but they definitely don’t form the larger part of that social media audience.”

Rob: “When we started the brand we made the decision we were a beer brand and we wanted to target beer drinkers. Some other brands have taken a decision to target particular people, whether that people who are trying to be more healthy or whatever, but my view is that if you do that you are potentially alienating people who aren’t not drinking for those reasons. If you are pregnant, or driving, or on medication, do you really want to be buying something that is a trying to be a health drink?”

James: “We are a craft beer brand – we just so happen to be 0.5% ABV.”

Where do you get your ideas and inspiration from?

Rob: “I go to the pub! I do drink alcohol, so I will go to a couple of the really good craft beer pubs in Ipswich, talk to the person behind the bar and stare out of the window and have a think!”

James: “I am at the sharp end of the social media foghorn all day for Big Drop and like it or not ideas will come through there, it is a firehose of information. But when I am not staring at my screen I tend to do gardening and barbecuing a lot, getting away from a screen tends to be the space where my ideas and inspiration comes from.”

Rob: “What this contract brewing model allows us to do is brew beer for Australia and Canada and Europe in those markets.

We don’t have to ship our beer all over the world – which is detrimental to the beer anyway – and means it is as fresh as possible when it hits those markets, and from a carbon footprint perspective we don’t have to put it on a boat and send it round the world.”

Who do you most admire in the sector and why?

James: “Many of the US beers we drink in the UK are made over there and shipped over the Atlantic, and I think ‘do you really need to do that?’. Provenance is important but I would argue that proximity is more important. There is no real reason these technically brilliant brewers couldn’t brew this beer anywhere

James: “I’m going further afield and am going to say Mikkeller.

When we started out they were one of our points of reference for what they were doing with their low/no’s and I like what they do with their labelling. It stands out and feels very individual.”

Rob: “I'm going to say Adnams, a good Suffolk brewery, they produce good beers and have a great portfolio of pubs, but what they did was produce alcohol free Ghostship which is a great beer. They did it using a different method to us, using reverse osmosis, but it is a great beer and I am a big fan of Fergus their head brewer.”

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SIBA BUSINESS - BACK OFFICE

LEGAL

IS YOUR BREWERY AT RISK? In this article Sally Shihadah, a Consultant at ATG (part of the Napthens group) discusses some of the health and safety risks which could impact on your business.

There is something to be said of ‘a good old knees up’ at your local pub, sampling the finest ales and quality food. What the punters don’t see behind the busy doors of a brewery are the hazards and risks your team are exposed to on a daily basis, to make this fine experience memorable.

Let’s talk about risk and how you, as the managing body of your pride and joy, ensure that your colleagues are kept at arms length from being harmed by this nasty word.

Every good business needs to manage its risk by looking at the hazards. What could potentially harm your colleagues?

Do you have adequate control measures in place? And more importantly, have you educated your team on the businesses risk assessment?

To achieve this, take a look at the top risks and how they may cause injury to your employees. Are any of these on your Risk Register?

• Manual handling and lifting e.g. barrels, casks and crates.

Musculoskeletal injury from heavy manual handling e.g. casks, kegs, crates, sacks and items of plant. Good manual handling techniques and adequate training, along with a suitable and sufficient risk assessment, will make sure your colleagues remain safe.

• Slips/Trips/Falls - half the injuries are from slips (90% on wet floors) and half from trips. A thorough cleaning schedule and hazard identification training along with good reporting procedures will help in reducing the risk.

• Vehicular movement/pedestrian segregation - a lack of good segregation of pedestrians from moving vehicles can lead to injuries that can be disastrous. Ensuring controls such as speed limits, signage and the provision of PPE (Personal protective equipment) are in place will eliminate the risk.

• Being struck by falling objects e.g. barrels, boxes, equipment. Good housekeeping and storage is a way of controlling this risk. Training and clear instruction along with supervision is key.

• Falls from height e.g. off ladders, work platforms, stairs and from vehicles. There is a hierarchy of control for managing risk. In the Working at Height regulations there are also set ways to reducing, as far as is reasonably practicable, exposure to this risk.

• Machinery - mainly conveyors but possibly bottling machines, packaging machines and palletisers. This is where your manufactures guide comes in. Always take time to read and even get the Sally Shihadah, a Consultant at ATG manufacturer to provide suitable training. A safe system of work and a risk assessment will formulate proactive measures to control this risk.

• Exposure to harmful substances e.g. cleaning chemicals and hot liquids. Training in COSHH is important and for a specific COSHH risk assessment to be drawn up and reviewed regularly.

• Transport - especially lift trucks. Risk assessment is key in providing a running order of your risks, hazards and injury through exposure and control measures you can put in place and monitor. User and statutory checks are also an example of a good control measure.

There are health risks which could also be associated with working in a Brewery: • Occupational lung disease from exposure to grain and malt dust.

• Occupational lung disease and nasal cancer from exposure to hardwood dust in coopperages.

• Noise - noise induced hearing loss from noisy plant e.g. casking/kegging, decrating/washing, bottling, canning and packaging machinery. A noise assessment will determine if you are in breach of noise regulations. From here a risk assessment and the provision of adequate PPE will limit exposure and reduce the risk.

For the health risks above, there is a legal requirement for health screening. A good regular health surveillance program provided by a competent occupational health provider is the best way to keep health risks reduced or avoided.

Having a risk register is a good way of starting to map out all the foreseeable risk to your business and its workforce.

Control measures to reduce this risk, as far as is reasonably practicable, is the best way to monitor what you have in place and if, over time it is sufficient by reviewing your document regularly.

For advice on this topic or on legal issues affecting your business please contact SIBA Legal Helpline: 0845 6710277 Napthens is a SIBA supplier associate and gold standard sponsor. The firm has a team of specialists looking after the legal requirements of clients in the leisure and licensed trade sector, with clients including Daniel Thwaites plc and Titanic Brewery.

Napthens manages the SIBA Legal Helpline which offers legal advice and guidance on a wide range of legal issues affecting your business including: general commercial, intellectual property, corporate finance, dispute resolution and litigation, commercial property, licensing, debt recovery, employment law and Health and Safety. Any enquiry through the helpline will receive up to 1 hour of free legal expertise (if further work is required, you’ll be advised of the appropriate charging structure) Full details of the helpline can be found on the SIBA Members Toolbox.

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You have beer.

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SIBA BUSINESS - BACK OFFICE

DIGITAL

HOW TO PROMOTE YOUR BREWERY WITH PARTNERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA You may well have been part of a tap takeover, partnering with another business to gain new customers for you both…but have you ever considered a Social Media takeover, says expert Matt Jones from Inapub?

This kind of digital partnership is only just starting to appear in the brewing world and can be a great way of growing your audience…

Much of what your brewery does will involve customers, pubs and other business partners. So what you do on your brewery Social Media should look to involve them to encourage them to engage and stay in touch.

Within the Social Media platforms there are several different tools and ways in which you can involve your business partners. In such instances, you can give them control or access to your Social Media for a period of time.

By doing this you will be promoting yourselves and them at the same time. You can do it in multiple ways on different platforms to gain new followers.

Here are the key ways in which you can do this: • When hosting events, set them up on Facebook and use your clients or partners as co-hosts. You should always set up a Facebook event to promote any event or occasion which you are running. For any such events, you can set up a cohost, as long as they have a profile (for individuals) or a Facebook page (for businesses). When setting up the event select the dialogue box ‘Co-Hosts’ and then enter the name of the person or page. You will need to be friends with them or following them. Once this is setup, they will receive an invite to be part of the event. Their followers will then see any update you add, and vice versa. This will encourage others to check your page also.

• Facebook has a setting to invite a user or page to post to your page as a Live video. These people known as ‘Live Contributors’ can post to your page Live. It is designed to allow you to have others post to your page on your behalf. Dependent on the person/ business this can help you to reach new followers. If you have a writer, blogger or influencer who is trying your beer, make them a live contributor and then can then post about it live. Alternately, if a pub is running a tasting of your beer (or similar event) then why not invite them to be instead. Or if you have a person who you trust at an event which serves your beer, ask them to be a contributor. Live gets eight times more reach than any other type of post. Involving others in this kind of posting will engage more people and get higher reach.

• Instagram offers your more ways in which you can invite others to help or contribute to posts and/ or promote for you. Instagram has been the second biggest Social Media Platform for around three years. This is not going to change any time soon. It is also the place where 20-35-year-olds are most easily reached by businesses on social media. Breweries can run an Instagram takeover for a period of time. You can do this for a day, weekend or week. You can select a host of the takeover from any of your business partners. For

Matt Jones from Inapub

instance you can give your logins to a pub for a weekend. They can run your account for that weekend and post to it from the pub. They can also post Instagram Stories from the pub. Posts can be about anything related to the beer. Pouring the pint, drinking the pint, people enjoying the beer in a garden or by a fire, a chef cooking with the beer, the food made using the beer being served, and more could all be done.

Similarly, a writer or influencer can spend the day talking about your beer. They can talk about the beer in your stories and videos for posts. Ensure you create a specific hashtag for the takeover E.g. #FireworksSIBA on a bonfire takeover. Ask the host to use that in every post they add. It works well on Instagram as it creates a new kind of content and allows you to reach a new audience of people.

These are just a few ideas and ways in which you can work with others on your Social Media to reach new audiences. You can look at doing this with any of the businesses you work with. Look out for these kinds of examples of Instagram and Facebook to see how they work. All of these methods are still reasonably underused on the platforms. They are considered innovative and interesting by users on Social Media. If you can appeal to these users you can hopefully gain them as new followers, and then hopefully new customers.

Inapub is the leading supplier of digital marketing solutions for Britain’s pub and beer trade, offering news, advice, training and website services. If you’d like to know more about how Inapub can help grow your business, email sales@inapub.co.uk or visit www.inapub.co.uk.

Matt can be contacted at mattj@inapub.co.uk or on 07387 099 674.

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SIBA BUSINESS - BACK OFFICE

FINANCE

COULD TAPROOMS BE THE ANSWER TO POST-BREXIT WOES? Money spent now on launching or expanding your taproom could help offset some of the financial storms coming down the line in an uncertain post-Brexit future, says Moorgate Brewery Finance’s Patrick Carberry…

As we write this the UK is in a mess. There is a massive uncertainty that shadows the country as nobody really knows what is going to happen as we prepare to leave the European Union; including our very own Prime Minister.

Most business owners don’t know if their business will hold out once we exit the EU and are reluctant to make plans. This has led many brewers to question how will Brexit impact the UK’s brewing industry?

It’s not a secret that the brewery industry might be affected just like every other business sector. We must of all heard by now how exports may become difficult for businesses, especially for our microbreweries. Rumour has it brewers might need to hire an export/import agent or buy software to make export decisions. It’s also been said that they should consider applying for an EORI number, change product labels and contact their haulier immediately.

We understand that this constant uncertainty of how to prepare for the future after Brexit is difficult for all in the brewing industry. But don’t wait around! We can all get prepared. Many breweries have already chosen to go down other avenues in order to keep their business afloat in what can only be known as difficult times.

So what options are available to you? Taprooms! Could they be the answer?

We have always enjoyed the ambiance of taprooms. Name a place better to enjoy a pint of beer than in the premises right where it was brewed. Taprooms are the place to meet the people behind the brew of your favourite pint. A bar where your favourite brewery can get 100% of the profit from that drink you just paid for.

And for the brewer… in the times where pubs are struggling to stay alive and compete with cheap supermarket prices, we believe establishing a taproom could be the answer to your prayers. And for the new start-up breweries a taproom will not only be a showcase

Moorgate Brewery Finance’s Patrick Carberry

of your finest brews, but it might become your lifeline.

This is the perfect business opportunity for you to build a reputation for your beers and showcase their individuality.

We understand that establishing a taproom is not a cheap or quick decision you can make, however there are many options available to help with the development of your business. Spreading the cost of your taproom by opting for finance payments will free up cashflow for you to spend elsewhere in your brewery. The money you make back in taproom and canned sales on Friday and Saturday nights will be enough to cover your monthly payments and make you profit.

Another tip when establishing your taproom is to get your community involved as much as possible. Having support from your local’s community will help you to increase your taproom sales and keep your business alive.

But you’re probably wondering what are the downsides to having a taproom? Well, trade will fluctuate depending on your customers and whether they get out to drink as much this month as they did last month. You will relay on your customers for sales so it’s up to you to make your place an establishment where they want to meet their friends and have a drink. With the right branding and community engagement you can ensure an influx of customers.

In the UK we have well over 2,000 breweries and many of which are planning to set up their own taproom, if they haven’t done so already. New start-up breweries are seeing how it makes sense to form their very own taproom from day one. After all, why not take immediate control of all that profit you make from your beer sales? Right now, it’s important not to sink into the background, compete with your fellow brewers at a time where you are going to need to. Taprooms are just one business idea to help you grow your profits and keep your brewery alive in competitive times. Could this be the answer for your brewery? Well maybe…

Contact Moorgate Brewery Finance for advice on developing your taproom on 01908 926 262 or by emailing e.vasey@moorgatefinance.co.uk

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FOR ALL YOUR MALT ENQUIRIES CONTACT WARMINSTER MALT-STARS. TEL: 01985 212014 INFO@WARMINSTER-MALT.CO.UK

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SIBA BUSINESS - BACK OFFICE

CELLAR MANAGEMENT

TURN TO TECHNOLOGY FOR FIZZING CELLAR MANAGEMENT Serving the perfect pint starts with proper cellar management.

Steve Lakin, National Customer Relationship Manager at drinks dispense specialist Innserve, discusses how technology can help raise the bar in cellar management.

It is no secret that serving the perfect pint starts with proper cellar management, and that poor cellar management is detrimental to beer quality. But good cellar management is about far more than delivering the perfect pint; by combining best practice with the latest technology, it can deliver savings and reduce overheads without compromising on quality.

Keep your cool Cask ale completes its final fermentation in the cask; to be served at its best, it needs to be stored in a cool and clean cellar. Too warm and it can develop a fob, too cold and it may be flat with a chill haze.

A simple way to ensure the ideal cellar temperatures – between 11°C and 13°C – are maintained is to install an efficient cellar cooling system.

The latest generation of cooling systems can be configured to exact requirements; by taking the size and layout of an individual cellar into account, a bespoke system that will ensure a consistent temperature, no matter how warm or cold the weather outside, can be configured.

The biggest benefit of such systems is that it takes the guesswork out of cellar cooling by maintaining a constant temperature while emitting minimal noise and vibration. It offers an added environmental benefit by helping reduce carbon emissions.

Clear the lines Because of its ‘live’ nature, ale in particular is susceptible to bacterial deposits building up within beer lines as it is pulled from cask to glass. As such, it is vital to ensure that beer lines are cleaned on a regular basis to avoid the build-up of dirt and bacteria which can ruin the product.

As beer must be extracted and poured away before cleaning takes place, the process can be time consuming and costly. Thankfully, technology exists that can substantially prolong the interval between line cleans.

Some devices, for example, harness the same technology used in the field of oil extraction to reduce this drain on time and resources; it is simply clamped onto a beer line, where it infuses the entire length of the system with an electromagnetic current which prevents scale, bio film and bacteriological growth.

Results have shown that using this technology can extend the gap between line cleans from seven days to between three and five weeks, depending on throughput, resulting in savings of between £1,000 and £1,500 a year.

Save your energy With energy efficiency high on the agenda, the installation of energy saving technologies can make a considerable contribution to reducing energy costs and boosting green

Steve Lakin, National Customer Relationship Manager

credentials. When it comes to cellar management, devices are available that can be installed to monitor energy use to ensure that costs are kept to a minimum.

It is good practice to install a thermometer; not only to check that the cellar is cool enough, but because overcooling by just 1°C increases energy usage and costs by around 10%.

Another way to save energy is by employing intelligent power sockets.

These can be fitted to beer coolers, where it ‘learns’ the power usage pattern of an individual cooler.

This not only enables substantial reductions in carbon emissions, but also results in impressive savings in energy consumption, saving the average outlet around £170 per cooler, per year.

Clean up your act It may sound obvious, but cleanliness is key when it comes to cellar management. Not only is a dirty cellar unsafe, but damp, clutter and dirty beer lines can all adversely affect the quality of a beer.

As standards rise and consumers become more demanding, beer quality has become an extremely important commercial consideration. A clean and tidy cellar, correct temperatures and clean lines all contribute towards creating the perfect pint, and the bottom line.

Innserve is the largest independent drinks dispensary company in the UK and is trusted by some of the UK’s leading pub companies.

For more information please visit www.Innserveltd.co.uk or call 01937 535000.

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+44 (0)1844 203100 sales@rankincork.co.uk rankincork.co.uk

TECHNICAL FOCUS

By Dr Keith Thomas of Brewlab, Sunderland

TRACE YOUR TOXINS

It’s difficult to read the news some days without seeing a report on a new food health scare, either a food poisoning outbreak or a contamination of toxins. Fortunately, as brewers we deal with a beverage relatively resistant to pathogens because of its acidity, alcohol, hops and low oxygen levels. Although we have our concerns these are nothing compared to those of the dairy industry where microbes have a much greater potential to grow and greatly reduce shelf life.

We do, though, have the potential to poison if our ingredients carry toxins into our wort and it is this potential we should consider when drafting our safety assessments on novel products.

Sadly, the brewing industry does have some history on poisoning drinkers. An extensive arsenic contamination in 1900 poisoned 6,000 drinkers in Manchester more than 70 of whom died due to impure sulphuric acid used in preparing brewing sugar. More recently, in 1965, drinkers in Canada suffered poisoning from cobalt sulphate used to enhance foam stability in Dow beer. While not as toxic as arsenic, cobalt does enhance cardiomyopathy and as a result 20 heavy drinkers died before the cause was identified.

Today major poisons are well regulated for food ingredients but toxic materials can still be used in some processings. High on the list of these are pesticides applied to crops including, inevitably, cereals and hops. Also of concern are hormones used to enhance plant growth and which may have toxic effects in long term exposure.

The wide array of pesticides once used on crops is considerably reduced today with broader and integrated approaches to pest management incorporating natural resistances, targeted application and biological control. Moreover, maltsters and hop merchants are keenly aware of the regulations and apply control methods to achieve acceptable levels. This may not apply, however, if you look to include additional materials into your grist or boil. Wild harvested crops may still be exposed to treatments depending on where they are gathered and may not be suitably processed. Even organic beers have been found to contain low levels of glyphosate.

While this is a positive result for our primary product it does mean that our by-products, particularly spent grain will carry the residues and so not be acceptable for organic use.

Hormones can have a different fate. Gibberellic acid can be used to accelerate germination of cereal grains as well as enhancing levels of malting enzymes and reducing levels of polyphenols.

Residual levels may be found in malts and concern could be raised as gibberellic acid does have health concerns. In brewing studies, however, gibberellic acid was found to decompose in mashing and boiling with none remaining in the finished beers.

While these studies provide reassurance we need to be aware of the presence of unknown components when using novel ingredients. Herbal beers are an occasional brew for many of us but increasingly popular as recipes diversify. Heather ale is one long standing example but recreations of medieval recipes may introduce all manner of vegetation to your pint.

Using these carries hazards in two areas. Firstly, the pharmacology of plants is incompletely documented. Leaving aside the contemporary interest in cannabinoids, plenty of plants carry toxins some of which are only located in specific tissues. Rhubarb is increasingly common in drinks but could be fatal if leaves were infused as well as stems. Bracken and broom both grow alongside heather but would introduce toxins if gathered by mistake. Even some herbs prescribed in recipes may have poisonous ingredients.

Ground ivy is a noted ingredient in Saxon ale recipes but contains the liver toxin pulegone as well as irritant terpenoids. Low levels may cause limited reaction but long-term exposure could develop problems.

Secondly, some plants have strong associations with fungi and harbour moulds which carry their own wealth of toxins. We are increasingly aware of aflatoxins from moulds in wet environments.

Increasing our dose from unintended ingestion would be unfortunate.

In summary we are fortunate to operate processes which manage our exposure and prevent poisoning but do need that additional care when incorporating imaginative ingredients.

As such it is worth looking at studies tracing toxins during brewing to determine their fate and possible survival. After all, boiling kills microbes so what effect does it have on toxins?

A number of studies have assessed the levels of pesticides and hormones during malting, hop processing and in the stages of brewing. The good news is that our processes do reduce levels such that the final beer can have much lower levels than initially dissolved in wort. In some cases, such as many pesticides, this is because the chemicals are poorly soluble in water and preferentially bind to solid materials. As a result, much is carried away on your spent malt and hops or absorbed into the residues left after the brew. Yeast will also act as a surface for removal so that levels decline progressively in fermentation and maturation.

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South East Region Cask Winners

REGIONAL BEER COMPETITIONS

SIBA South East Region

Overall Champion of the Cask Competition Sponsored by

Cask British Dark Beers (up to 4.4%)

Cask British Dark Beers (4.5 to 6.4%)

Jim Wilson, Close Brothers Brewery Rentals presents George Mason with the gold award

Gary, Tonbridge Juddians presents Tom O’Neill with the gold award

Gary, Tonbridge Juddians presents Ed Davy with the gold award

GOLD Signature Brew Ltd Roadie 4.3 SILVER Bedlam Brewery Bedlam Amagansett American Pale Ale 5.0 BRONZE Gun Brewery Zamzama 6.5

GOLD Long Man Brewery Old Man 4.3 SILVER Gun Brewery Parabellum 4.1 BRONZE Canterbury Brewers & Distillers Canterbury Stout 4.1

GOLD The Five Points Brewing Company Railway Porter 4.8 SILVER Pilgrim Brewery Saracen Stout 4.5 BRONZE Brumaison 1770 London Porter 4.7

Cask British Bitter (up to 4.4%) Sponsored by

Cask British Premium Bitter (4.5 to 6.4%) Sponsored

Cask Session IPA (up to 4.3%) Sponsored by

Cask Premium PAs (4.4 to 5.4%) Sponsored by

Mark Lovegrove, Charles Faram presents Gus Day with the gold award

Mark Lovegrove, Charles Faram presents Robert Wickes with the gold award

Mark Lovegrove, Charles Faram presents George Mason with the gold award

Nigel Gibbons, Crips Malt presents Will Hartley with the gold award

GOLD Pilgrim Brewery Progress 4.0 SILVER Andwell Brewing Company Ltd King John 4.2 BRONZE New River Brewery Ltd Twin Spring 4.0

GOLD Westerham Audit Ale 6.2 SILVER Sambrook’s Brewery Junction Ale 4.5 BRONZE New River Brewery Ltd Isle of Rye 5.2

GOLD Signature Brew Ltd Roadie 4.3 SILVER The Wimbledon Brewery Company Ltd SW19 Blonde Ale 4.0 BRONZE The Five Points Brewing Company Five Points XPA 4.0

GOLD Bedlam Brewery Bedlam Amagansett American Pale Ale 5.0 SILVER Long Man Brewery American Pale Ale 4.8 BRONZE Tonbridge Brewery Limited American Pale 5.0

Cask IPA (5.5 to 6.4%)

Cask Speciality Light Beers

Cask Speciality Mid to Dark Beers Sponsored by

Cask Strong Beers (6.5% and over)

Old Juddians RFC, The Slade, Tonbridge 5th July 2019

Charles Faram & Co Ltd

Close Brothers Brewery Rentals

Sponsored by

Jim Wilson, Close Brothers Brewery Rentals presents Joshua Walker with the gold award

GOLD Stratford International Brewhouse (T/A Tap East) IPA 6.0 SILVER The Park Brewery Spankers IPA 6.0 BRONZE The Wimbledon Brewery Company Ltd Quartermaine IPA 5.8

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SIBA JOURNAL AUTUMN 2019

Close Brothers Brewery Rentals

by

Rankin Brothers & Sons

Jim Wilson, Close Brothers Brewery Rentals presents Nigel Welsh with the gold award

GOLD Flack Manor Brewery Romsey Gold 4.0 SILVER Red Cat Brewery Art of T 3.6 BRONZE

By The Horns Brewing Co. Tropika 4.5

Rastal GmbH & Co KG

CFB Boilers

Crisp Malt

Dave Parish presents Cliff Murphy with the gold award

Dave Parish presents Mark Berry with the gold award

GOLD BEXLEY BREWERY Black Prince Rum Porter 5.0 SILVER Mad Cat Brewery Ltd Cat-ro 4.0 BRONZE Stratford International Brewhouse (T/A Tap East) Coffee In The Morning 5.6

GOLD Gun Brewery Zamzama 6.5

South East Region Bottle & Can Winners

REGIONAL BEER COMPETITIONS

Overall Champion of the Bottle/Can Competition

Bottle/Can British Dark Beers (up to 4.4%)

Bottle/Can British Dark Beers (4.5 to 6.4%)

Justin Giddings presents Aidan Goodwin & Will Barnes with the gold award

Robert Wickes, SIBA Director presents Mark Berry with the gold award

Robert Wickes, SIBA Director presents Mark Russell with the gold award

Robert Wickes, SIBA Director presents Tim Abbott with the silver award

Sponsored by

Croxsons

Bottle/Can British Bitter (up to 4.4%)

GOLD West Berkshire Brewery India Session Ale 4.2 SILVER Redemption Brewing Company Hopspur 4.5 BRONZE Westerham Wally Winkers Death

By Chocolate 4.5

GOLD Gun Brewery Parabellum 4.1 SILVER The Crafty Brewing Co. Limited Dunsfold Best 4.0 BRONZE Bowman Ales Limited Meon Valley Bitter 3.9

GOLD The Cronx Brewery Entire 5.2 SILVER East London Brewing Company Quadrant Oatmeal Stout 5.8 BRONZE

By The Horns Brewing Co. Lambeth Walk 5.1

GOLD Andwell Brewing Company Ltd Gold Muddler 4.2 SILVER Whitstable Brewery Co Ltd East India Pale Ale 4.1 BRONZE Long Man Brewery Copper Hop 4.3

Bottle/Can British Premium Bitter (4.5 to 6.4%)

Bottle/Can Session IPA (up to 4.3%) Sponsored by Totally

Bottle/Can Premium PAs (4.4 to 5.4%)

Bottle/Can IPA (5.5 to 6.4%)

GOLD Redemption Brewing Company Hopspur 4.5 SILVER Whitstable Brewery Co Ltd Kentish Reserve 5.0 BRONZE Andwell Brewing Company Ltd King John 4.6

Colin Wilson, Totally Natural Solutions presents Aidan Goodwin & Will Barnes with the gold award

Colin Wilson, Totally Natural Solutions presents Gus Day with the silver award

GOLD West Berkshire Brewery India Session Ale 4.2 SILVER Reunion Ales Ltd Air Supply 4.0 BRONZE Hammerton Brewery N1 4.1

GOLD Wild Card Brewery NEIPA 5.4 SILVER Pilgrim Brewery Pioneer 4.5 BRONZE The Park Brewery Small Riot 4.5

GOLD The Wimbledon Brewery Company Ltd Wimbledon IPA 6.2 SILVER Redemption Brewing Company Big Chief 5.5 BRONZE Wild Card Brewery India Pale Ale 5.5

Bottle/Can Imperial IPA (6.5% and over)

Bottle/Can Session Lager & Pilsner (up to 4.4%)

Bottle/Can Premium Lager & Pilsner (4.5 to 6.4%)

Bottle/Can Speciality Light Beer

Mike, Tonbridge Juddians presents George Mason with the silver award

Mike, Tonbridge Juddians presents Chris with the gold award

Mike, Tonbridge Juddians presents Tim Abbott with the gold award

Mike, Tonbridge Juddians presents Willie with the gold award

GOLD Wild Card Brewery DDH IPA 7.5 SILVER Signature Brew Ltd Double Roadie - Gyle 500 8.6 BRONZE Gun Brewery Zamzama 6.5

GOLD

By The Horns Brewing Co. Lager 4.0 SILVER Gun Brewery Numb Angel 4.0 BRONZE Whitstable Brewery Co Ltd Kentish Lager 4.1

GOLD Whitstable Brewery Co Ltd Whitstable Pilsner 4.9 SILVER Windsor and Eton Brewery Republika Lager 4.8 BRONZE Andwell Brewing Company Ltd Pilsner 4.8

Bottle/Can Speciality Medium to Dark Beers

Bottle/Can Sours/Spontaneous

Bottle/Can Strong Beers (6.5% and over)

Mike, Tonbridge Juddians presents Adam Hardy with the gold award

Mike, Tonbridge Juddians presents George Mason with the gold award

Robert Wickes, SIBA Director presents Andy Moffat with the gold award

Mike, Tonbridge Juddians presents Robert Wickes with the gold award

GOLD Westerham Wally Winkers Death

By Chocolate 4.5 SILVER Hammerton Brewery Crunch 5.4 BRONZE Signature Brew Ltd Nightliner 5.7

Natural Solutions

GOLD The Park Brewery Lemon Sour 5.8 SILVER Red Cat Brewery Beach Towels in Paradise 4.5 BRONZE CRATE Brewery CRATE Citra Sour 3.6

Sponsored by

Beatson Clark

GOLD Signature Brew Ltd Anthology 10.0 SILVER The Wimbledon Brewery Company Ltd XXXK Vintage Ale 10.0 BRONZE West Berkshire Brewery Stay Grounded 10.0

Sponsored by

QCL Scientific

Colin Wilson, Totally Natural Solutions presents Derek Prentice with the gold award

GOLD Windsor and Eton Brewery Uprising’s Caught By The Fuzz 5.0 SILVER Laine Brew Co MANGOLICIOUS 4.7 BRONZE Signature Brew Ltd Festival Saison 4.8

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Midlands Region Cask Winners

REGIONAL BEER COMPETITIONS

SIBA Midlands Region

Overall Champion of the Cask Competition

Cask British Dark Beers (up to 4.4%)

Cask British Dark Beers (4.5 to 6.4%)

Frances Maud, Murphys presents Joanna Coleman, Milestone with the gold award

James Calder, SIBA presents Joanna Coleman, Milestone with the gold award

James Calder, SIBA presents Anthony Hughes, Lincoln Green with the gold award

GOLD Milestone Brewery Raspberry Wheat Beer 5.6 SILVER Lincoln Green Brewery tuck 4.7 BRONZE Grafton Brewery CARAMEL STOUT 4.8

GOLD Milestone Brewery Lock Prop & Barrel 4.0 SILVER Nottingham Brewery Ltd Rock Mild 3.8 BRONZE The Loose Cannon Brewing Company Ltd Abingdon Bridge 4.1

GOLD Lincoln Green Brewery tuck 4.7 SILVER The Backyard Brewhouse 1898 4.9 BRONZE Derby Brewing Company 1770 Dashingly Dark 4.8

Cask British Bitter (up to 4.4%) Sponsored by

Cask British Premium Bitter (4.5 to 6.4%) Sponsored

Cask Session IPA (up to 4.3%) Sponsored by

Cask Premium PAs (4.4 to 5.4%) Sponsored by

Beth Eaton, Charles Faram presents Anthony Hughes (proxy) with the gold award

Beth Eaton, Charles Faram presents Don, Backyard Brewhouse with the gold award

Carl Heron, Crisp Malt presents Richard Hobson, Blue Monkey with the gold award

Carl Heron, Crisp Malt presents Gary Ashworth, Magpie Brewery with the gold award

GOLD Purity Brewing Company Pure Gold 3.8 SILVER The Backyard Brewhouse The Hoard 3.9 BRONZE Brampton Brewery Brampton Best 4.2

GOLD The Backyard Brewhouse Gold 4.5 SILVER The Grainstore Brewery Limited Ten Fifty 5.0 BRONZE Towcester Mill Brewery Ltd Saxon Shield 4.7

GOLD Blue Monkey Brewery Marmoset 3.6 SILVER The Loose Cannon Brewing Company Ltd Session IPA 4.1 BRONZE Church Farm Brewery Session IPA 3.8

GOLD Magpie Brewery Pow Pow 4.6 SILVER Purity Brewing Company Longhorn IPA 5.0 BRONZE Shipstones Beer Company Hollow Stone Waitomo 4.5

Cask IPA (5.5 to 6.4%)

Cask Speciality Light Beers

Cask Speciality Mid to Dark Beers

Cask Strong Beers (6.5% and over)

Dave Parish, CFB Boilers presents Richard Hobson, Blue Monkey with the gold award

Dave Parish, CFB Boilers presents Joanna Coleman, Milestone with the gold award

Sponsored by

Murphy & Sons Ltd

The Embankment, Peterborough 20th August 2019

Charles Faram & Co Ltd

Sponsored by

CFB Boilers

GOLD Blue Monkey Brewery Infinity Plus 1 5.6 SILVER Navigation Brewery Saviour 5.5 BRONZE Shipstones Beer Company India Pale Ale 5.5

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by

Rankin Brothers & Sons

GOLD Milestone Brewery Raspberry Wheat Beer 5.6 SILVER Grafton Brewery Apricot Jungle 4.8 BRONZE Titanic Brewery Raspberry Wheat 4.7

Rastal GmbH & Co KG

Neil Walker, SIBA presents John Allcroft, Grafton with the gold award

GOLD Grafton Brewery Caramel Stout 4.8 SILVER Old Sawley Brewing Co Plummeth The Hour 4.5 BRONZE Blue Monkey Brewery Guerrilla Plum Stout 4.9

Crisp Malt

Neil Walker, SIBA presents William Davis, Grainstore with the gold award

GOLD The Grainstore Brewery Limited Nip 7.3 SILVER Navigation Brewery Chocolate Coconut Stout 7.0 BRONZE Kinver Brewery Over the Edge 7.5

Midlands Region Bottle & Can Winners Overall Champion of the Bottle/Can Competition Sponsored by

Beer Box Shop

Simon Hulse, Beer Box Shop presents Gav Stanton, White Horse with the gold award

REGIONAL BEER COMPETITIONS

Bottle/Can British Dark Beers (up to 4.4%)

Bottle/Can British Dark Beers (4.5 to 6.4%)

Bottle/Can British Bitter (up to 4.4%)

Anthony Hughes, SIBA presents Gav Stanton, White Horse with the gold award

Anthony Hughes, SIBA presents Paul Knight, Weal Ales with the gold award

Anthony Hughes, SIBA presents Emma Hough, Dancing Duck with the gold award

GOLD White Horse Brewery Oxford Dark Blue 4.3 SILVER Purity Brewing Co Pure Helles 5.0 BRONZE Titanic Brewery Plum porter 4.9

GOLD White Horse Brewery Oxford Dark Blue 4.3 SILVER Brampton Brewery Impy Dark 4.3 BRONZE Great Oakley Brewery Welland Valley Mild 3.6

GOLD Weal Ales Brewery Centwealial Milk Stout 4.9 SILVER Loddon Brewery Hocus Pocus 5.0 BRONZE Dancing Duck Brewery Dark Drake 4.5

GOLD Dancing Duck Brewery 22 4.3 SILVER Derby Brewing Company Business As usual 4.4 BRONZE Slater’s Ales Premium 4.4

Bottle/Can British Premium Bitter (4.5 to 6.4%)

Bottle/Can Session IPA (up to 4.3%)

Bottle/Can Premium PAs (4.4 to 5.4%)

Bottle/Can IPA (5.5 to 6.4%)

Anthony Hughes, SIBA presents Andrew, Slaters with the gold award

GOLD Tunnel Brewery Ravenstone 5.0 SILVER Brampton Brewery Wasp Nest 5.0 BRONZE Peak Ales Ltd Flat Cap 4.5

GOLD Slater’s Ales 1 Hop 4.0 SILVER Brewhouse & Kitchen Lichfield Tricky Spires 4.0 BRONZE Purity Brewing Company Bunny Hop 3.5

Bottle/Can Imperial IPA (6.5% and over)

Bottle/Can Session Lager & Pilsner (up to 4.4%)

Anthony Hughes, SIBA presents Bob Yates, Tunnel with the gold award

Sponsored by

Beatson Clark

John Allcroft, SIBA presents Sam Stephens, Rebellion with the gold award

GOLD Rebellion Beer Company 24 Carat 5.0 SILVER Brampton Brewery Tudor Rose 4.6 BRONZE Slater’s Ales Haka 5.2

John Allcroft, SIBA presents Eve Clarke, Brampton with the gold award

GOLD Brampton Brewery Speciale 5.8 SILVER Loddon Brewery Forbury Lion IPA 5.5 BRONZE Dancing Duck Brewery Abduction 5.5

Bottle/Can Premium Lager & Pilsner (4.5 to 6.4%)

Bottle/Can Speciality Light Beer

Stuart Haggar, Saxon Packaging presents John Allcroft (proxy) with the gold award

Stuart Haggar, Saxon Packaging presents Sam Stephens, Rebellion with the gold award

Sponsored by

Saxon Packaging

John Allcroft, SIBA presents Ben Milner, Intrepid with the gold award

John Allcroft, SIBA presents Sam Stephens, Rebellion with the gold award

GOLD Intrepid Brewing Co Pecsaetan IPA 6.5

GOLD Rebellion Beer Company Lager 4.4 SILVER Derby Brewing Company Python Pilsner 4.2 BRONZE Charnwood Brewery Liska 4.0

GOLD Purity Brewing Company Pure Helles 5.0 SILVER Milestone Brewery Helles Lager 4.7 BRONZE The Loose Cannon Brewing Company Ltd Oxford Pils 5.0

Bottle/Can Speciality Medium to Dark Beers

Bottle/Can Sours/Spontaneous

Bottle/Can Strong Beers (6.5% and over)

Stuart Haggar, Saxon Packaging presents Keith Bott, Titanic with the gold award

Stuart Haggar, Saxon Packaging presents Jess Collins, Castle Rock with the gold award

Stuart Haggar, Saxon Packaging presents Eve Clarke, Brampton with the gold award

GOLD Titanic Brewery Plum Porter 4.9

GOLD Castle Rock Brewery Sourlero 4.0

GOLD Brampton Brewery Menin Gate 7.4

GOLD Rebellion Beer Company White 5.0 SILVER Peak Ales Ltd Chatsworth Gold 4.6 BRONZE Dhillon’s Brewery Bright Eyes 3.8

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East Region Cask Winners

REGIONAL BEER COMPETITIONS

SIBA East Region

Overall Champion of the Cask Beer Competition

Cask British Dark Beers (up to 4.4%)

Cask British Dark Beers (4.5 to 6.4%)

Nigel Hoppit, SPAsoft presents Richard Naisby with the gold award

Ian Ryding, SIBA Regional Director presents Trevor with the gold award

Ian Ryding, SIBA Regional Director presents Steve Birch with the gold award

GOLD Milton Brewery Minerva 4.6 SILVER Earl Soham Brewery Albert Ale 4.4 BRONZE Oakham Ales Citra 4.2

GOLD Billericay Brewing Company Woody’s Bark 4.3 SILVER Elgood & Sons Ltd Black Dog 3.6 BRONZE Earl Soham Brewery Gannet Mild 3.3

GOLD Mauldons Brewery Black Adder Stout 5.3 SILVER Milton Brewery Nero 5.0 BRONZE Lacons Brewery Old Nogg 6.0

Cask British Bitter (up to 4.4%) Sponsored by

Cask British Premium Bitter (4.5 to 6.4%) Sponsored by

Cask Session IPA (up to 4.3%) Sponsored by

Cask Premium PAs (4.4 to 5.4%) Sponsored by

Nigel Gibbons, Crisp Malt presents Jeremy Moss with the gold award

Nigel Gibbons, Crisp Malt presents Tim Dunford with the gold award

Nigel Gibbons, Crisp Malt presents Matthew Ashford with the gold award

Nigel Gibbons, Crisp Malt presents Richard Naisby with the gold award

GOLD Earl Soham Brewery Albert Ale 4.4 SILVER Colchester Brewery Metropolis 3.9 BRONZE Tydd Steam Brewery Ltd Ratcatcher 4.3

GOLD Green Jack Brewing Co Ltd Trawlerboys 4.6 SILVER Mile Tree Brewery Ltd Larksong 4.5 BRONZE The Norfolk Brewhouse Pond Hopper 4.5

GOLD Oakham Ales Citra 4.2 SILVER Leigh on Sea Brewery Legra Pale 3.8 BRONZE Grain Brewery Ltd ThreeOneSix 3.9

GOLD Milton Brewery Minerva 4.6 SILVER Adnams Ghost ship 4.5 BRONZE Tring Brewery Ltd Pale Four 4.6

Cask IPA (5.5 to 6.4%)

Cask Speciality Light Beers

Cask Speciality Mid to Dark Beers

Jim, Close Brothers presents Will Neaverson with the gold award

Jim, Close Brothers presents Steve Birch with the gold award

Sponsored by SPAsoft Ltd

Elgoods & Sons North Brink Brewery, Wisbech 19th September 2019

Charles Faram & Co Ltd

Sponsored by Close Brothers Rentals

Jim, Close Brothers presents Alan Kerr, with the gold award

GOLD Tring Brewery Ltd White IPA 5.5 SILVER Oakham Ales Green Devil IPA 6.0 BRONZE Leigh on Sea Brewery Cockle Row Spit 5.6

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Rankin Brothers & Sons

GOLD Tydd Steam Brewery Ltd Ginja Ninja 4.3 SILVER Grain Brewery Ltd Weizen 5.0 BRONZE Brentwood Brewing Co Buzz Lightbeer 4.5

Rastal GmbH & Co KG

GOLD Mauldons Brewery Blackberry Porter 4.8 SILVER Billericay Brewing Company Chilli Porter 5.9 BRONZE The Norfolk Brewhouse Triskele 4.5

Crisp Malt

Cask Strong Beers (6.5% and over) Sponsored by Close Brothers Rentals

Jim, Close Brothers presents Leanne Rowe with the gold award

GOLD Grain Brewery Ltd Lignum Vitae 6.5 SILVER Lacons Brewery Audit 8.0 BRONZE Ferry Ales Brewery Cossack 8.0

East Region Bottle & Can Winners

REGIONAL BEER COMPETITIONS

Overall Champion of the Bottle/Can Competition

Bottle/Can British Dark Beers (up to 4.4%)

Bottle/Can British Dark Beers (4.5 to 6.4%)

James Calder, SIBA presents Sam Calverley with the gold award

James Calder, SIBA presents Will Edwards with the gold award

James Calder, SIBA presents Mark & Jamie with the gold award

Bottle/Can British Bitter (up to 4.4%)

James Calder, SIBA presents Reuben Dalton with the gold award

GOLD Calverley’s Brewery Pale Ale – Citra – Simcoe – Mosaic 4.2 SILVER The Norfolk Brewhouse Jackalope 4.2 BRONZE Elgood & Sons Coolship Fruit 5.0

GOLD Wolf Brewery Sirius Dog Star 4.4 SILVER St. Peter’s Brewery Co Ltd Ruby Red Ale 4.3 BRONZE Calverley’s Brewery Stout Columbus – Magnum 3.2

GOLD George’s Brewery Hopmonster Mad Dog Mild 4.9 SILVER Billericay Brewing Company Chapel Street Porter 5.9 BRONZE Nethergate Brewery Old Growler 5.0

GOLD Elmtree Beers Ltd Best Bitter 4.2 SILVER George’s Brewery Empire 4.0 BRONZE The Norfolk Brewhouse Galtons No1 Norfolk Ale 4.0

Bottle/Can British Premium Bitter (4.5 to 6.4%)

Bottle/Can Session IPA (up to 4.3%)

Bottle/Can Premium PAs (4.4 to 5.4%)

Bottle/Can IPA (5.5 to 6.4%)

Sponsored by

Beatson Clark

Neil Walker, SIBA presents John Cussons with the gold award

Neil Walker, SIBA presents Sam Calverley with the gold award

Neil Walker, SIBA presents John Cussons with the gold award

Barry Watts, SIBA presents Alan Kerr with the gold award

GOLD Ferry Ales Brewery 49 Squadron 4.9 SILVER Elgood & Sons Ltd Warrior Ale 5.5 BRONZE Green Jack Brewing Co Ltd Gone Fishing 5.5

GOLD Calverley’s Brewery Pale Ale – Citra – Simcoe – Mosaic 4.2 SILVER Elmtree Beers Ltd Golden Star Morris 4.0 BRONZE Grain Brewery ThreeOneSix 3.9

GOLD Ferry Ales Brewery Mandarina 5.0 SILVER Billericay Brewing Company Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll 5.0 BRONZE Nethergate Brewery Growling Dog Session IPA 4.5

GOLD Tring Brewery Ltd White IPA 5.5 SILVER Leigh on Sea Brewery Cockle Row Spit 5.6 BRONZE St. Peter’s Brewery Co Ltd India Pale Ale 5.5

Bottle/Can Imperial IPA (6.5% and over)

Bottle/Can Session Lager & Pilsner (up to 4.4%)

Bottle/Can Premium Lager & Pilsner (4.5 to 6.4%)

Bottle/Can Speciality Light Beer

Marcus Beecher, SIBA Regional Director presents John Cussons with the gold award

Marcus Beecher, SIBA Regional Director presents Bruce Ash with the gold award

Barry Watts, SIBA presents Trevor & Richard with the gold award

GOLD Billericay Brewing Company Mayflower Gold 6.5

Bottle/Can Speciality Medium to Dark Beers

Richard Naisby, SIBA Regional Director presents Alan Pateman with the gold award

GOLD Elgood & Sons Ltd Plum Porter 4.5 SILVER Green Jack Brewing Co Ltd Red Herring 5.0 BRONZE Leigh on Sea Brewery Renown 4.0

Barry Watts, SIBA presents Bruce Ash with the silver award

GOLD Adnams Dry Hopped Lager 4.2 SILVER The Norfolk Brewhouse DewHopper 4.0 BRONZE St. Peter’s Brewery Co Ltd Stormtrooper Lightspeed Pils 4.2

GOLD Ferry Ales Brewery Lincoln Lager 4.5 SILVER Woodforde’s Brewery Conquest 4.5 BRONZE Wibblers Brewery (Farms) Ltd Odyssey 5.0

Bottle/Can Sours/Spontaneous

Bottle/Can Strong Beers (6.5% and over)

Richard Naisby, SIBA Regional Director presents Alan Pateman with the gold award

Richard Naisby, SIBA Regional Director presents Will Wood with the gold award

GOLD Elgood & Sons Ltd Coolship Fruit 5.0

GOLD Lacons Brewery Audit Ale 8.0 SILVER St. Peter’s Brewery Co Ltd Cream Stout 6.5 BRONZE Ferry Ales Brewery Cossak 8.0

GOLD The Norfolk Brewhouse Jackalope 4.2 SILVER Grain Brewery Ltd Weizen 5.0 BRONZE Nethergate Brewery Umbel Ale 3.8

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GOLD MEMBERS

Equipment finance Providing you with flexible finance packages to meet your business requirements.

Equipment finance

Funding solutions that let you make long term

Key benefits of equipment finance Providing you with flexible finance packages In today’s market where finding capital to fund difficult, we are uniquely positioned to help as w to meet 1.your business requirements.

In depth knowledge of the supporting the drinks industry including brewe

Equipment finance industry

distilleries and wine producers. We are familiar Providing you with flexible finance packages 2. Finance can be tailored tosolutions that let you commonly and have good relationships w Funding make long used term investments. to meet your business requirements specific requirements Key benefits of equipment finance In today’s market where finding capital fund investment is often Types oftoequipment funded:

difficult, we are uniquely positioned to help as we solely focus on 3. Fair deposit and security • including Brewhouse and complete Brewho supporting the drinks industry breweries,vessels cider producers, distilleries and wine producers.

We are familiar with the equipment Funding solutions that let you make long term investments • relationships Malt and with drythe goods handling equipment orcommonly fees used and have good main suppliers.

In today’s market where finding capital to fund investment is often difficult, • Fermenting vessels, conditioning and brig Typeswe ofare equipment uniquely funded: positioned to help. We focus solely on supporting the drinks industry including wine and cider producers and distilleries.

Chillers, carbonators, filters and other pro • Brewhouse vesselsbreweries, and•complete Brewhouse installations We are familiar with the equipment commonly used and have good • Malt and dry goods handling equipment • suppliers.

Keg washing and filling lines relationships with the main • Fermenting vessels, conditioning and bright beer tanks • Bottling lines, canning lines, labellers and

1. In depth knowledge of the requirements industry 2. Finance can tailored to 4. beNo hidden costs Key benefits specific requirements 3. Fair1deposit and knowledge security In-depth of requirements the industry 4. No 2hidden costscan or fees Finance be tailored to specific requirements 3 Fair deposit and security requirements 4 No hidden costs or fees

• • •

Chillers, carbonators, and other processing equipment Types of equipmentfilters funded: Keg washing and fillingand linescomplete brewhouse installations • Brewhouse vessels Bottling lines, canning lines, labellers and packers • Malt and dry goods handling equipment

• Fermenting vessels, conditioning and bright beer tanks • Chillers, carbonators, filters and other processing equipment • Keg washing and filling lines • Bottling lines, canning lines, labellers and packers

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SIBA JOURNAL AUTUMN 2019

GOLD MEMBERS

Case study Clonakilty Distillery Our customer

Clonakilty Distillery is a new spirits manufacturer based in County Cork, Ireland. The locally run business was set up by founding directors Michael Scully, Helen Scully and Padraic Coll in 2016.

The distillery focuses on producing triple distilled, single pot whiskey using local heritage varieties of barley grown on the Scully’s farm. While the whiskey matures for a minimum of three years, they also produce gin, which is sold in both domestic and export markets.

In addition to producing quality spirits, The Clonakilty Visitor Experience offers tours of the working distillery, Whales Restaurant, and an outlet selling both product and merchandise.

Business challenge

Close Brothers were approached to fund the distillery’s investment in equipment and support its ongoing business plan by improving cash flow.

Due to start-up challenges and subsequent delays to the start of production, the business required more working capital upfront than originally estimated. As Close Brothers had worked closely with the business throughout the project, associated risk could be quantified quickly, and the overall funding plan could be adapted without delay.

The solution

The distillery secured a finance lease which enabled them to invest in dry goods handling and storage equipment, alongside brewing, fermenting and distilling equipment. They also purchased a processing and bottling plant.

In addition, the business released additional working capital from existing specialist assets using our Sale and Lease Back product.

Result

We are delighted to be able to support Clonakilty Distillery as they grow the company and product range. The specialist equipment we helped fund has allowed distillation of their own spirits to commence and sales to grow. We hope this investment will support the business for many years to come.

It was a pleasure working with the team from an early stage and building a strong relationship. As the project developed, we adapted to ensure we could meet the requirements and provide a viable solution.

We have every confidence that the Clonakilty Distillery will thrive and hope Close Brothers can continue to support it as it grows.

Steve Devine, Sales Manager at Close Brothers

To find out more call us today on 01425 485421 or visit closebreweryrentals.co.uk

WWW.SIBA.CO.UK

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GOLD MEMBERS

Thomas Fawcett & Sons Ltd is a

seventh generation family business that has been manufacturing speciality quality malts for 210 years on its original site in Castleford, West Yorkshire. The Company has always operated on this site for the simple reason that it is close to one of the best barley growing areas in the UK and The Company’s own bore holes provide excellent and consistent quality water for the manufacture of malt.

The Company is unique in that it operates 6 different production units from the same site; two floor maltings, a Saladin box maltings, a more modern Germinating Kilning Vessel maltings, and two bespoke roasting houses for the production of Crystal and Roasted products. Production times are lengthy by modern standards, but we believe it leads to greater consistency in mash tun performance and more intense malty flavours. Batch sizes are small which allows for tight control of blending in order to achieve any customer specification. We manufacture over 30 different standard malts; a full range of Pale Ale malts from different barley varieties, together with all the other malted cereals of Wheat, Rye and Oats. Whilst barley malts comprise the majority of the brewers’ grist, our other cereal malts are fully modified and can be used at relatively high addition rates without the need for step-temperature mashing or separate cereal cookers.

Oat malt has a higher husk:endosperm ratio and is useful in keeping the mash bed open / porous as well as providing its unique flavour contribution. Crystal malts are made from fully modified grains where the starch has been broken down into sugars and then

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caramelised at high temperatures in the roasting drum. The Crystal malt range is from light coloured, honey flavoured Caramalt, through toffee / caramel flavours of standard Crystal, to very dark Red Crystal which gives an intense, rich, ruby-red colour to the beer. Conversely, Roasted malts are made from partially germinated, kilndried grain that is then roasted at high temperatures resulting in a toasting of the starch. This gives a range of flavours and colour from slightly biscuity-flavoured Amber Malt, to coffee / chocolate flavours of the mid-range products, and the intense roast character and colour of Black malt. We also include Wheat and Rye in the crystal and roasted range which gives Brewers the complete spectrum of raw materials with which to create unique, top quality, flavourful beers.

The finest barleys make the finest malts and the Company strives to procure the best barley samples from each season. Pale Ale malts are largely made from the iconic barley varieties Maris Otter and Golden Promise, though not exclusively. Proven winter varieties such as Halcyon and Pearl are still available as well as modern Spring varieties.

The Company prides itself on quality and service.

The Company offers the complete range of packaging and delivery options. Malt is supplied in 25kg sacks (either whole or pre-milled) shrink wrapped on pallets or in larger tote bags (350kg, 500kg, or 1,000kg) and in up to 25 tonne bulk loads. The Company provides a dedicated delivery service via its own transport fleet inclusive of drivers willing to help off-load.

GOLD MEMBERS

HARVEST REPORT 2019 The wet August caused considerable delays to combining, and some of the later cut spring barley showed signs of weather damage

The 2018/19 growing season has generally been better than the previous year. Winter barleys went into good seed beds, the winter was not particularly cold nor wet, and the spring barleys went in on time. However, we then had a very dry late spring and early summer. When the rain did come it was very varied across the country. The south, and particularly East Anglia, did not get enough, parts of Lincolnshire were flooded, where as Yorkshire had a good, even amount. As a result, when we started barley walks in late June/ early July, the local crops looked thick and well grown, with every indication of good yields.

Further south, the picture was not quite so good, with some of the winter barley being high nitrogen due to the lack of moisture and late uptake of nitrogen into the ear. The 2019 crop has therefore been mixed, but with enough low nitrogen barley from which we have been able to choose the best samples. Prices dropped due to reasonable yields and low feed wheat prices. Uncertainty surrounding Brexit has also played a part with the weakening ÂŁ sterling. Unlike previous years, some of the Maris Otter from the south and East Anglia did not make the grade due to high nitrogen, and there was a shortage of supply. Fortunately we have Maris Otter grown in Yorkshire and Shropshire, which was of good quality, and we have enough to supply our customers next year. Other winter malting barleys from Yorkshire were also of very good quality, and we have bought some excellent Pearl for pale ale malt, as well as Craft for crystal and roast malt production.

The Spring barleys are always later cut, but this year the wet August caused considerable delays to combining, and some of the later cut spring barley showed signs of weather damage: splitting, and skinning. Thankfully, because of our size and specialist nature, we have been able to procure all our requirement of top quality low nitrogen barley from this harvest by buying small parcels at the right time.

We are customer driven to help brewers of all traditions and sizes. For further information or for a bespoke quotation to reflect your malt variety preference, volume, packaging and delivery requirements please email: sales@fawcett-maltsters.co.uk or call us on 01977 552490.

WWW.SIBA.CO.UK

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SIBA brewers' news

SIBA BREWERS' NEWS

Purity Brewing Company heads down under

Warwickshire brewery Purity Brewing Company is celebrating a unique partnership with Prancing Pony Brewery from South Australia.

This partnership has been the culmination of two successful collaboration brews between the two brewers, brewing the multi award winning Hopwork Orange at Purity for the UK market.

After overwhelming positive feedback both brewers are delighted to be entering a strategic partnership that will see Purity brew Prancing Pony beers under license on a regular basis. And starting soon, Prancing Pony will be reciprocating the arrangement; with Purity’s CEO & Co-Founder Paul Halsey and Flo Vialan

heading down under to brew a Purity beer for the Australian Market.

Speaking of the partnership, Corinna Steeb, CEO of Prancing Pony, said: “Purity was like the big brother that lived overseas for the Pony. We could identify with every aspect of their business all the way down to their involvement with the local community, their dedication to the arts and local music, to the sustainable approach that underpins everything they do.”

On how the partnership came about, Purity’s CEO & Co-Founder Paul Halsey added: “Ever since the International Beer Challenge awards where Prancing Pony won supreme champion beer for their India Red Ale, Flo and I wanted to learn more about the brewery. Trying their beers

and reaching out to Corinna & Frank we knew we had found people who were passionate about great beer with real character as much as ourselves. Inviting them over to brew a collaboration brew seemed an obvious winner.”

Now with a more formal agreement in place that will see both breweries brewing ‘Under License’ for each other and will see Prancing Pony distribute a range of Purity’s draught and packaged beers across Australia, it means both markets will be able to enjoy our award winning beers.

Both head brewers are thoroughly excited at the prospect of working closer together and as both breweries use brew houses made by German manufacturer BrauKon. Frank Samson, Head Brewer and CoFounder, said: “It’s great to be teaming up with Purity and that our beer will be hitting the shelves super fresh. Not using ships or containers will reduce the potential for spoilage and help maintain both brewers sustainable ethos.” Flo Vialan, Purity’s Director of Brewing, said: “I’m so proud and excited to be working closer with Frank and the whole team at Prancing Pony, brewing is all about sharing ideas and passions and the beers we’ve brewed so far have been so well received I can’t wait for the next one.”

For more about Purity Brewing Company visit www.puritybrewing.com and for more information on Prancing Pony visit www.prancingponybrewery.com.au

Tesco to sell Hogs Back Little Swine low alcohol beer Surrey-based Hogs Back Brewery has secured a listing with Tesco for its Little Swine 2.8% beer, launched in pubs earlier this year.

Bottles of the beer were available in around 200 of the retailer's stores from August.

Billed as a ‘Small Beer with a Big Flavour', Little Swine meets consumer demand for low alcohol beers that fully deliver on flavour. Hogs Back initially launched Little Swine in February this year in keg. It is a dry-hopped, aromatic pale ale, brewed with a blend of aroma hops, including the citrussy Cascade grown in the Hogs Back hop garden and American Mosaic hops with complementary tropical notes. The beer is then dry hopped for additional aroma and flavour.

Tesco is the first major retailer to take Little Swine in bottles. Hogs Back has adapted the pump clip design to create an eye-catching bottle label which features the iconic Hogs Back hog, reduced in size to reflect the beer's name. The neck label communicates Hogs Back's ‘Field to Firkin in a Furlong' positioning, based on the 200 yards distance from the hop garden to the brewhouse.

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A 330ml bottle of Little Swine contains less than one unit of alcohol and will be included in Tesco's ‘four for £6' bottled beer offer.

Hogs Back Brewery managing director Rupert Thompson said: "We're delighted to have secured this significant listing for Little Swine with Tesco, which takes our small beer to a big audience.

We're very proud of Little Swine, our first lowalcohol beer. Our brewing team have created a beer with all the taste of our full strength range, using additional hops and malts to compensate for the lower ABV. This beer is for drinkers who love the taste of beer but want to moderate the amount of alcohol units they drink, perhaps so they can enjoy a beer at lunchtime or a few in the evening and still keep a clear head for the afternoon or next day. Drinkers loved Little Swine on draught and we're sure the bottled version will be just as popular."

Hugo Murray, Buying Manager for Ale and Stout at Tesco said: "Low alcohol beers are a new direction for the Surrey brewery and Little Swine is very on trend, a small beer packed with hops, juicy and crisp.”

For more information go to www.hogsback.co.uk

SIBA brewers' news

SIBA BREWERS' NEWS

Stroud Brewery hosts the first ever ‘Flavour Voyage’ with chef and presenter Tim Maddams and River Cottage’s very own Steven Lamb Organic beer producer Stroud Brewery has teamed up with chef and presenter Tim Maddams and River Cottage legend Steven Lamb as they took guests on a culinary seasonal ‘Flavour Voyage’ in July.

This was a not to be missed event, pairing a four course menu of delicious organic produce with six of Stroud’s organic beers, exploring pale ales with luscious floral aromas,through to the rich, sweet stout flavours of Schwarzwälder.

Food fans will recognise Tim from the River Cottage series, where he regularly appeared alongside Hugh Fearnley-Whittenstall. Since then, he’s become a private chef, author, cookery school teacher and presenter.

Steven Lamb, River Cottage’s Curing & Smoking expert, teacher and author, said: “We are spoilt for choice when it comes to the abundance of amazing produce grown and raised across the

South West. We are super excited to give guests the chance to pair some of our favourite ingredients with delicious Stroud beers.

We want to create excitement, interest and engagement with Stroud brewery and their growing audience.”

For more information go to www.stroudbrewery.co.uk

Sambrook’s to relocate brewing production to the Ram Quarter in Wandsworth Sambrook’s is delighted to announce that it is relocating production to the Ram Quarter in the heart of Wandsworth.

The new brewery will be set within the restored Grade-II listed brewery buildings at the site of the old Young’s Brewery.

Alongside a commercial brewery operation Sambrook’s will operate a taproom set around Ram’s central square with outdoor seating together with a visitors’ centre and brewery museum, showcasing the history of brewing in London.

The new facility will be opening in Spring 2020, after which Sambrook’s will be closing its original site in Battersea from which it has operated since August 2008.

To celebrate the announcement, Sambrook’s brought back its much-loved beer and music festival “Beer by the River” on 13th July at the Ram Quarter.

Brewing has been taking place at Ram Quarter since at least 1533. Famously the site was home to Young’s until 2006.

During redevelopment the Ram’s brewing legacy has been preserved by former

Young’s master brewer, John Hatch, who maintains a nanobrewery at the site. The relocation of Sambrooks will re-launch the commercial brewing from the site and continue the brewing heritage since 1533.

Duncan Sambrook, founder and managing director of Sambrook’s Brewery, said: “Our move to Ram Quarter feels like a homecoming. Wandsworth has had a rich

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brewing heritage and we’re excited to be able to continue this and secure the future of Sambrook’s brewery. It’s a fantastic location for us to expand our retail offering and is just metres from the River Wandle after which our most famous beer takes its name.”

For more information go to www.sambrooksbrewery.co.uk

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SIBA brewers' news

SIBA BREWERS' NEWS

Powderkeg wins big with game-changing low-alcohol beer

Powderkeg brewery has once more put Devon beer on the map with its new lowalcohol pale ale.

At the 2019 World Beer Awards, held in London in August, the brewery's latest creation "Green Light" was named the UK's best low-alcohol pale ale, beating many of the country's biggest names to the winner's podium.

The "low and no" category is the fastest growing sector in the beer market currently,

having seen sales rocket over the last couple of years.

"All sorts of people are cottoning on to the idea," explains Jess Magill, co-founder of the brewery. "It means you can more readily enjoy a beer in far more situations – with lunch, at the end of the working day, on the beach, after sport - it just opens up your options. Of course, the key thing is flavour. There are plenty of great naturally non-alcoholic drinks available, so if you're drinking a low-alcohol beer, it has to hit the spot in terms of taste. No one wants to feel like they're being hard done by for choosing a low-alcohol option."

Clearly such a prestigious award, judged by some of the biggest names in the brewing industry, shows Green Light is hitting the spot on the flavour front. Head Brewer John Magill talks about how he created the product: "Until recently, lowalcohol beer had a deserved reputation as heartless, soulless, gutless. But Green light is different. It's made with love, by beer lovers. We've held the highest

expectations throughout the development process, and have used our many years of brewing experience along with cutting-edge techniques to produce a beer that we're proud to put the Powderkeg name to."

Brewed using a full mash of seven different malts, late kettle-hopped and then dryhopped for a stunning tropical and citrus fruit finish, everything about the brewing process is designed with the mantra that only more good ingredients go in, rather than the big-industry practice of brewing a weak beer and then stripping the alcohol out, along with most of the flavour. The result is a premium, refreshing, modern craft beer with all the hallmarks of quality you expect from PK. The fact that it is low alcohol, low in calories, gluten-free and vegetarian is just an added bonus, but one that makes this truly an 'anytime for anyone' beer - a pint of freedom with all the flavour and no repercussions.

For more information got to www.powderkegbeer.co.uk

International Award Success for St Peter's Brewery Suffolk-based craft brewery, St Peter's, has scooped four coveted prizes in this year's International Beer Challenge.

The International awards, highly respected in the beer industry, aim to reward the highest-quality beers from around the globe and provide winning brewers a platform to promote their beers to the trade and consumers.

With a shrewd expert panel of the best beer judges from across the globe including retailers, importers, publicans, brewers and flavour analysts, winning an IPC is an internationally recognised symbol of quality, frequently displayed on beer labels and as a result can raise a brands profile, prestige and sales.

In this year's worldwide competition with 72 different categories

and entries from 40 countries, St Peter's Brewery won a Bronze award for its Cream Stout, two Silver awards for its Plum Porter and Without® Raspberry & Elderberry, plus the sought-after Gold award for its Crafted Black IPA. “We are absolutely delighted to have won four awards in this year's International Beer Challenge. The Gold award for our Crafted Black IPA is a huge pat on the back for the whole team and a great endorsement of the ongoing focus we have on improving current brews and innovating with new ones such as the Without® Elderberry and Raspberry,” says John Hadingham, MD at St Peter's Brewery.

For more information visit www.stpetersbrewery.co.uk

Salcombe Brewery Co. launches a limited edition Red Rose beer to celebrate Rugby World Cup Salcombe Brewery Co. showed its support for the England rugby team throughout the Rugby World Cup with the launch in September of its very special limited edition Red Rose beer, available from the brewery in bag-in-boxes via the shop and online, and on draught in pubs across the country.

Brewer Sam Beaman said: “We are huge rugby fans here at Salcombe Brewery so we were very excited at the prospect of creating a beer to celebrate the World Cup. Just like the competition, Red Rose brings together some of

the best ingredients from across the globe with hops from Britain, New Zealand and the New World.”

Red Rose (ABV 4.0%) is a mahogany malty beer that has a spiced caramel and toffee malt base with a balanced bitterness followed by a smooth fruity finish. Created using a range of both British, New World and New Zealand hops the result is a flavoursome beer that is both subtle and complex.

Red Rose is part of Salcombe Brewery Co.’s seasonal range which complements the brewery’s much-loved year round beers Island Street Porter, Seahorse, Salcombe Pale Ale, Lifesaver, Devon Amber, Shingle Bay and Salcombe Gold.

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For further information visit www.salcombebrewery.com SIBA JOURNAL AUTUMN 2019

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SIBA brewers' news

SIBA BREWERS' NEWS

York's Treboom Brewery wins coveted Great Taste Award Great Taste, the world’s most prestigious food and drink awards, has announced its stars of 2019. Out of 12,772 products sent in from over 100 different countries, Treboom Brewery's Kolsch-style lager, Trommel, was awarded a Great Taste Star.

Judged by over 500 of the most demanding palates, belonging to food critics, chefs, cooks, restaurateurs, buyers, retailers and producers, as well as a whole host of food writers and journalists, Great Taste is widely acknowledged as the most respected food accreditation scheme for artisan and speciality food producers.

As well as a badge of honour, the unmistakeable black and gold Great Taste label is a signpost to a wonderful tasting product, which has been discovered through hours and hours of blind tasting by hundreds of judges.

At 5% ABV, Trommel is brewed in the

style of a German Kolsch lager. The judges described it as 'having a juicy fresh flavour, with a good level of acidity and some brioche notes giving it a really lovely body’.

They said: 'The bitterness builds, but stays in balance with the other flavours really well and has an almost champagne-like elegance'.

“We are absolutely thrilled with the award,” said co-founder, Jane Blackman.

“Seven of our beers have now won Great Taste Awards and this is the second award this year for Trommel which was given a Silver medal in the industry, SIBA North East competition. Achieving recognition for our products purely based on taste makes all the hard work worthwhile.”

John Lewis, owner and head brewer, said: “We wanted to brew a refreshing lager people could drink on a hot day straight from the fridge but which did not compromise on flavour. Kolsch, being a lager/ale hybrid fitted the bill perfectly.”

For more information go to www.treboom.co.uk

SALT Beer Factory celebrates top world beer accolades West Yorkshire‘s fledgeling SALT Beer Factory is toasting a double success in the fiercely contested World Beer Awards.

The innovative micro-brewery scooped UK gold medal in the WBA’s Black IPA class with ‘Answer is None’ (7.2% ABV) and UK bronze for American IPA with ‘Alpaca DDH IPA’ (6.6% ABV). Both winners were first brewed in March this year.

‘Answer is None’ is a Black IPA with aromas of lime, pine, mango and mint.

‘Alpaca DDH IPA’ is an East meets West Coast hybrid of American styles, with aromas of mango and guava. At SIBA’s North East Independent Beer Awards in May ‘Alpaca’ was voted ’Overall Champion of the bottle/can category’ after claiming gold in the Imperial IPA class.

Ossett Brewing Company, an independent brewer and pub operator, invested £1.7m to launch SALT in November 2018. SALT Beer Factory consists of a 20 hectolitre brewery and modern taproom, sited in a Grade II listed former Edwardian tram-shed The brewing team at SALT Beer Factory. Colin Stronge - Head Brewer, Chris Wigg – Brewer, Nadir Zairi – Director, Chris Morse - Events Manager & Brewing Assistant. at the heart of the UNESCO World Heritage village of Saltaire. and talent have shone through to result in these internationally The aim was to create a strong brand bringing together heritage prestigious awards. To win this high acclaim in less than a year of and modern brewing to produce showstopping hop-forward beers. brewing at SALT is a wonderful achievement for the brewery team - a real testimony to the very creative and high-quality beers they Ossett owner Jamie Lawson said: “With the launch of SALT we are brewing.” entered the craft beer market following 20 years of brewing top quality cask-conditioned ales at Ossett. Now that experience For more information go to www.saltbeerfactory.co.uk

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SIBA brewers' news

SIBA BREWERS' NEWS

Docks Beers launches two beers in can Grimsby brewery Docks Beers are launching two beers in can. The first is their lager, Overtime, the only lager ever to be brewed in Grimsby. The striking red, black and white can features an illustrated docks scene with the ABP Port Office clock tower taking centre stage.

The launch of this 4% beer, the brewery’s first core range beer to be packaged in a 440 ml can, has been long awaited.

Will Douglas, Director, said: “Our customers have been asking us to can Overtime for months but our thirsty taproom drinkers get through so many pints that saving any for canning was proving difficult. Our designers Source 4 have again blown us away with their artwork. The bigger canvas of the 440ml can has given Kirk Arnold a chance to shine and his illustration really smashes it.

We love the grittiness of the shackle and chain and the clocktower is so cleverly incorporated to represent Overtime. It’s pure Docks.”

Docks Beers also recently teamed up to brew with another of the UK’s most prominent breweries, Magic Rock.

The joint effort resulted in its second collaboration beer, ‘Golden Hour’, a 6.5% Double Dry Hopped Mimosa Pale Ale. It is due for release simultaneously with Overtime.

Docks Beers brewer Lewis Birch, formerly of Magic Rock, was instrumental in setting up the collaboration: “I was really keen to get Docks Beers brewing with my excolleagues at Magic Rock in Huddersfield.

Stuart Ross is one of the UK’s most highly regarded brewers and so it was a coup to get him over to Grimsby. We are thrilled with Golden Hour. It’s unmistakably a beer but bucks fizzesque tangy zest and juicy citrus notes really shine through. We have managed to get this with a complex mix of malts which provide a rich mouthfeel balanced with a low bitterness and citrus from orange, lemon and lime. It has been double dry hopped with punchy Mandarina Bavaria and Amarillo hops to give a full citrus, Mimosa like flavour.”

Docks Beers Director, Shahram Shadan, commented on the thinking behind the name: “Golden Hour is obviously a nod to the explosion of fruit in this beer, but I suggested it because it also evokes the magical orange hues of the first and last part of the day as the sun rises and

falls. The can design is a great blend of the beach at Cleethorpes and the unmistakable graphics of Magic Rock.

We were privileged to have input from Magic Rock designer Richard Norgate who provided his graphics to Source 4.

As well as cans we will be serving this beer on draft in our taproom and Magic Rock’s taproom in Huddersfield.”

For more information go to www.docksbeers.com

Henstone Distillery, based at Stonehouse Brewery, celebrates 500 days until its first whisky is ready Is 500 days a long time to wait? Not for a good whisky it isn’t! As of Friday 30th of August, it was exactly 500 days until the first whisky expression from Henstone Distillery is ready for release.

Apart from the handful that will be retained by the Directors, all bottles from the first cask have been pre-sold, but the next cask will be available for general release early in 2021.

Shane Parr from Henstone said: “We are checking the casks regularly and are impressed by the progress. The exbourbon casks are imparting great flavour, but we want to make sure we retain the character of our spirit and all the effort that went into producing it”. Shane is also owner of Stonehouse Brewery and the distillery utilises the brewery equipment and expertise. “Being outside of Scotland allows us some flexibility on how we make our whisky, such as adjusting the pH of our liquor, but there are other things we

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do to ensure we produce a unique rich spirit packed full of esters. Controlling fermentation temperature, rather than just letting it rise, allows us to get the best flavours from the yeast,” added Shane.

Although they haven’t yet, Henstone is considering releasing a limited number of pre-sold casks and anyone interested should contact the brewery so they can be notified. As part of a cask purchase, owners can expect a tour around the unique Henstone and Stonehouse site in Oswestry with its own garden bar set in a cider orchard.

“We didn’t distil a lot of whisky in the first year, so early releases will be limited.

We’re gradually ramping up production as capacity in the brewery allows. We’ve also got some interesting plans in the pipeline for cask finishing but that’s all top secret at the moment,” said Shane.

For more information go to www.henstonedistillery.com SIBA JOURNAL AUTUMN 2019

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SIBA brewers' news

SIBA BREWERS' NEWS

Good Pub Guide names Oakham Ales in top spot Award-winning Oakham Ales has been named as the Brewery of the Year by the prestigious Good Pub Guide, which was published in September.

Glasses were raised in celebration at the Peterborough-based brewery and the entire workforce was delighted to learn the independent guide had chosen Oakham Ales for the top spot.

“We were absolutely thrilled to be told that Oakham Ales has been named Brewer of the Year. It’s a fantastic award from one of the best-known publications in the industry and reflects the hard work of the team and commitment to our customers,” said managing director Adrian Posnett.

“This is proving to be a very special year, with more awards for our beers, expansion plans well underway and now this.”

The brewery has won the Good Pub Guide’s Own Brew Pub of the Year for the Brewery Tap three times over the last 19 years and the editor of Good Pub Guide

Fiona Stapley said the publication ‘knows and loves’ the company’s ales.

“We have thousands of readers on our database who send us regular reports and letters and thoughts about pubs and beers in general, as well as specific details on pubs they visit," she explained. “I always keep a careful check on reports over the year to see what highlights stand out. And Oakham Ales have come in for particular praise – for their regular beers as well as their seasonal ones. And they love the Brewery Tap in Peterborough of course.

“Oakham Ales’ prices are fair, their awardwinning beers are excellent as well as interesting and they are constantly coming up with new ideas rather than just sticking to what they know and branching out to reach new areas. Their innovation and enthusiasm for the company really stands out. So we feel this is a well deserved accolade.”

This latest honour for the team at Oakham Ales comes after the brewery’s best selling

Hawkshead Brewery launches new 0.5% beer, Lighter Times Lighter Times is Hawkshead’s brand new beer, recognising the change in consumer trends and the need to move with what people want from low alcohol beers, there was a natural gap to be filled in Hawkshead’s beer portfolio.

Steve Ricketts, Managing Director, said: “We’re excited to be launching Hawkshead Lighter Times 0.5% Low Alcohol Pale Ale, our first foray into the expanding low and no alcohol space. Matt and the team have developed a beer that delivers the taste, flavour and drinkability that consumers know and love about Hawkshead Beers.”

The main focus of Lighter Times is flavour, bringing together the perfect balance of speciality malts and big hop flavour. It is full bodied and packed full of American hops which really showcases you don’t need to be big in volume to be big on flavour.

Matt Clarke, Head Brewer at Hawkshead Brewery, said: “I really wanted to produce a beer I would be happy to drink myself, this was certainly a challenge with low alcohol beer. We have worked really hard to pack as much flavour into this beer as possible and I am really happy with the results.”

Hawkshead are the official beer sponsors of the Tour of Britain and excited to announce that at Stage Four Kendal finish, the New Union in Kendal will be hosting Hawkshead as their official hub in the town, and offering free samples of Lighter Times as well as a brewery member of staff on hand to chat about the new beer and all things Hawkshead.

For more information got to www.hawksheadbrewery.co.uk

From left: Stewart Poulter, Brewer; Ed Sharman, Brewer; Oliver Jones, Brewer; Alex Kean, Head Brewer and Daniel Teat, Trainee Brewer.

beer Citra was awarded the Champion Golden Beer of Britain and Bronze in the overall Supreme Champion Beer competition at this year’s Great British Beer Festival held in London in August.

For more information go to www.oakhamales.com

Anglesey Brewhouse is among the Great Taste winners of 2019 Great Taste, the world’s most coveted food and drink awards, has announced its stars of 2019. Out of 12,772 products sent in from over 100 different countries, Anglesey Brewhouse was awarded a 2-star Great Taste award, which means judges dubbed it above and beyond delicious for its Trearddur Bay ESB (Extra Special Bitter), a very drinkable Auburn and Malty craft beer.

Judged by over 500 of the most demanding palates, belonging to food critics, chefs, cooks, restaurateurs, buyers, retailers and producers, as well as a whole host of food writers and journalists, Great Taste is widely acknowledged as the most respected food accreditation scheme for artisan and speciality food producers.

As well as a badge of honour, the unmistakeable black and gold Great Taste label is a signpost to a wonderful tasting product, which has been discovered through hours and hours of blind tasting by hundreds of judges.

Phil, the co-founder, with his wife Karen explain: “Having entered our Rhosneigr IPA last year and won a one-star award we thought we’d see if we could go one better with the Trearddur Bay ESB. Brewer Adam had developed a recipe that involved 5 different malts, 3 different hop varieties and a complementary yeast ensuring the balance was just right. Don’t take our word for it though this is what the judges said ‘The colour is an attractive and the nose delivers gentle caramel notes.

The sweet malt flavours are to the fore on the palate but with just enough sourness and bitterness to keep things fresh. A very satisfying ale. A lovely layering of flavours, and a smooth mouthfeel.”

For more information go to www.angleseybrewhouse.co.uk

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SIBA brewers' news Dorking Brewery has announced guaranteed next day delivery in Surrey or your money back

SIBA BREWERS' NEWS

As part of its vision to be "the best brewery in Surrey" Dorking Brewery has launched a double lock guarantee.

1. Guaranteed next day delivery in Surrey or your money back.

2. Guarantee of quality or free replacement.

Neel Singh, Managing Director, said: "In response to a survey of our customers, their number one concern was poor quality of service and lack of consistency in product.

As a direct result of this we have launched our new double lock guarantee."

Dorking Brewery is a regional brewery based in Surrey operating across cask, keg and small pack. This year turnover has doubled versus 2018 as the brewery enters new markets.

For more information go to www.dorkingbrewery.com

Newby Wyke brewery sets sail with HMS Queen Elizabeth golden ale Award-winning Grantham brewery Newby Wyke has just delivered a major shipment of its first ever bottled beer to the Royal Navy's largest ever warship.

Newby Wyke sent down more than 2,000 bottles of its 6% ABV HMS Queen Elizabeth golden ale to the flagship Royal Navy vessel of the same name.

The brew, first created to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, will now be drunk by senior staff on the vessel.

The move also means almost 1,500 bottles will also be sold locally in bottle shops and good pubs in addition to the cask version currently available in pubs.

The story began in 2014 when an exnaval serviceman took a photo of one of the HMS Queen Elizabeth pump clips in

the Nobody lnn in North Street, Grantham.

They then sent it to a senior member of the crew who was working on HMS Queen Elizabeth.

Christine March, wife of brewer Rob, explained: "They asked us if we could do a brew for the naming of the ship, but we did not have enough time." lnstead, Newby Wyke sent a picture of the pump clip, which was presented to the new vessel. ln turn, the brewery received the ship's coat of arms. Nothing was heard from the ship again, but then, unexpectedly in June this year, more than five years later, the couple received an email asking them to provide bottles for one of the messes.

Newby Wyke has never produced bottled beer before in its 21 year history, believing

its beer should be drunk in pubs rather than at home to help keep pubs open, but the offer was too good to refuse!

Delivering the beer in time for the Queen Elizabeth leaving Portsmouth meant Rob and Christine had to pull out all the stops and work many extra long days. The beer was brewed in July and then bottled in Birmingham, arriving back in Grantham in September.

Then, a few days later, Rob and Christine's son Darren Hudson of Colstenruorth trucking company Hudson and White delivered the beers to Portsmouth and they then had a guided 9O-minute tour of the ship. As a supplier to the HMS Queen Elizabeth, Newby Wyke is now classed as "a friend of the ship," which means any employee of Newby Wyke can go on board.

For more information go to www.newbywyke.co.uk WWW.SIBA.CO.UK

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Getting microbial control for small brewers in high-volume markets With more people choosing to buy their beer from supermarkets rather than pubs, there’s never been a better time for craft breweries to enter this market. However, competition is fierce and brewers’ choice of microbial control method could be key to their success. Oliver Rudman, Application Engineering Specialist for the Separation and Purification Sciences Division at 3M, the science-based technology company, explains…

“The popularity of craft beer with consumers shows few signs of abating.

According to SIBA's British Craft Beer Report 2019, 24 per cent of consumers would be more likely to visit a pub or restaurant if it had a good selection of craft beer.1 Yet increasingly, they are drinking at home. Indeed, 16 per cent would consider switching where they do their shopping based on the range of craft beer a supermarket offers.2 Supermarkets have jumped on these trends, reporting sales growth of up to 40 per cent, and are doing their utmost to stock a wide variety of such beers, with some offering selections of up to 90 craft and speciality beers.3 It is welcome to see routes to market widen for craft beer but seizing this opportunity will require the stringent requirements set out by supermarkets to be met by breweries, and this can present significant production and cost challenges - particularly for smaller, independent operations.

While a perfectly balanced flavour profile attracts the connoisseurs, moving into wholesale selling means brewers need to ensure batch consistency and longer, more reliable shelf lives. Beer sold in supermarkets needs to be microbiologically stable, so stray bacteria can’t turn the product cloudy or encourage ongoing fermentation (which can have explosive results). Breweries need to account not just for how long a beer sits on the supermarket shelf, but also time spent in transit and even in the customer’s home as it waits to be drunk.

And the beer must taste the same, batch after batch, to preserve the flavour profiles that brewers have perfected as part of their unique brand and that their customers expect every time.

Key to achieving these goals is microbiological control, and brewers now have a choice of options. Traditionally, breweries have relied on pasteurisation techniques, but developments in filtration technology offer a credible alternative in the form of cold stabilisation, which also brings

some additional benefits.

Pasteurisation involves heating beer to a temperature at which microbial life can no longer exist. There are two common variants of the process. The first, and more traditional, is tunnel pasteurisation, where cans or bottles of beer are moved on an enclosed conveyor before being immersed in, or sprayed by, hot water.

However, this method has recently been superseded by flash pasteurisation, often referred to as high-temperature, short time (HTST) processing. In HTST processes, beer is heated to high temperatures for just a matter of seconds, or the beer is sent through a thermal bypass system to kill off any bacterial life. Through the process, the room-temperature shelf-life of a beer can be increased by more than 120 days and, provided the line pressure is tightly regulated, it preserves all the flavours and gasses created during the brewing process.

But many breweries choose not to use flash pasteurisation. While it preserves the makeup of the beer, the process can cause early oxidation4, and sometimes the denaturing of flavours, leading to staleness.

According to Henry’s Law, by heating the beer, its gas saturation index is lowered, reducing its ability to retain dissolved gasses such as carbon dioxide - which can result in flat beer.

Further, the equipment required for pasteurisation can constitute a significant capital investment and the process is hugely expensive at large scales owing to rising energy costs and the large amounts of water needed.

Therefore, many breweries – especially the smaller ones – are turning to sterile filtration. This process, also known as cold stabilisation, relies on the use of filter membranes that are capable of catching even the smallest of microbial life - down to 0.2µm in size, if necessary (although most beer can be considered sterile if it is filtered down to the 0.45μm). Using the process, a brewery could expect to extend the shelf life of its beer by 120-180 days when it is stored at room temperature.

Because sterile filtration takes place at ambient temperatures, there is less chance of oxidation or the denaturing of the flavour components in the beer occurring, thus maintaining its profile. By choosing the correct membrane for the specific beer being produced (and the relevant spoilage bacteria to be filtered) the process can be highly optimised.

Sterile filtration doesn’t require the application of heat to work, so there is no need for heat exchangers or cooling systems, saving energy costs. Further, the optimum line pressure required for sterile

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viewpoint

filtration is around one barg, whereas pasteurisation plants are regulated at approximately 10-14 barg. Therefore, the need for booster pumps, and the energy costs associated with running them against a high differential pressure, can be avoided. Moreover, unlike pasteurisation plants, these filters and their housings require very little floorspace and are easy to fit and maintain.

Some breweries claim that membranes can strip flavour from the beer by trapping flavour components, but as sterile filtration is much gentler on the product, it typically results in a fresher, more natural flavour than that achieved with flash pasteurisation. Rare cases where there is an impact on taste can often be caused by the use of an unsuitable filter, and test work carried out by application engineering teams can point the brewer in the direction of the best filter for its process.

Perhaps the only drawback to cold stabilisation in comparison with pasteurisation is the increased spend on consumables it requires. Blocked filters need to be replaced at the end of their working lives. However, through recent advances in membrane technology, the rate at which this blockage occurs has been reduced and they are now more easily cleaned—making the cold stabilisation process far more economical.

Filters often become blocked by a build-up of colloidal material such as protein and agglomerations of carbohydrates, rather than micro-organisms. By tweaking the base chemistry of the filter membranes, the likelihood of these substances binding to them can be reduced, lowering the rate of blockage, and by modifying the construction of the filters to, for instance, increase their filtration areas, a further extension to their working lives can be achieved.

As we have seen, cold stabilisation possesses a number of advantages over more traditional pasteurisation processes to achieve microbiological stability. As breweries, particularly smaller ones, become more aware of these benefits, they will be able to compete confidently and cost effectively for space on supermarket shelves.”

Sources: 1&2. www.siba.co.uk/2019/03/14/siba-british-craftbeer-report-2019-industry-growth-new-jobs-freshchallenges/ 3. www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2017/05/are-craftbrewers-selling-out-the-indies-in-supermarket-move/ 4. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/ pdf/10.1002/j.2050-0416.2011.tb00508.x

Learn more about 3M at www.3M.co.uk or follow @3MUK on Twitter.

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SIBA supplier news

SUPPLIER NEWS

Kemtile keeps it in the family with the appointment of two Sleights to the team It really is a family affair at Kemtile, as the leading hygienic flooring company for UK breweries strengthens its team with the appointment of not one but two Sleights.

Kemtile’s brewing credentials include projects for the likes of Heineken, Greene King, Gipsy Hill, Camden Town, Ossett and Utopian.

Dave was the first of the Sleight family to be recruited as Contracts Manager earlier this year, and now son Mike has joined Kemtile as Estimator Surveyor.

Dave brings with him 33 years’ experience to the company, gained with some of

the biggest brands from the UK’s food and drink, construction, pharmaceutical, commercial, retail and aerospace sectors.

And now Mike, a Keele University graduate with four years industrial and commercial flooring industry experience under his belt, is supporting and advising Kemtile customers throughout the quotation process for their flooring projects.

Kemtile Director Stephen Westley said of the double appointment: “We were delighted to have attracted someone of David’s calibre to the company and straight away our customers were reaping the benefits of his vast experience and expertise. When we found out that his son Mike had embarked

upon a similar career path and had so many valuable skills to offer the company too, we were keen to recruit him.

“We’re celebrating our 40-year anniversary this year and it’s an exciting time in terms of our own growth and development so it’s great to have this father and son team on board. Welcome to the company, David and Mike.”

For further information visit www.kemtile.co.uk/brewery, call 01925 763045 or email enquiries@kemtile.co.uk.

Local maltsters take on cycling challenge and raise over £35,000K Members of the Simpsons Malt and McCreath Simpson & Prentice (MSP) ‘Humble Maltsers’ team took on the gruelling RideLondon challenge on the 4th of August in memory of friend and colleague, Peter Simpson.

Taking on the mammoth 100-mile closed-road cycle circuit in London, which finished at Buckingham Palace, the 5 strong team were raising money for the charity Pancreatic Cancer UK. As Peter was a keen cyclist himself, the team felt that this was a fitting challenge and the perfect tribute to him as well as a way of raising some vital cash that will fund world-leading research into pancreatic cancer prevention.

The team has smashed the £5,000K target with an astounding £35,000K raised so far.

To donate, please visit: http://bit.ly/team-humble-maltster

Makro launches checkweigher for craft brewers Makro Labelling UK has been appointed agent for the Radwag Rotary Checkweigher, which is most suited to can lines that have been put into the craft beer market.

Richard Portman, managing director of Makro Labelling UK, said about this latest addition to his machine portfolio: “One of the main issues for the craft brewers using cans is being able to conform to the Average Weight legislation. Currently the only option that has been available is to employ someone to stand at the end of the filling machine, taking off the line 4 cans in every 100, and weighing them, assuming all is OK then putting them back on the line for packing.”

Richard continued, "With the Radwag checkweigher, you can install this over an existing conveyor, the unit has a star wheel which takes every can that has

been filled and records the production from the filler/seamer. With the introduction of the Radwag checkweigher, craft brewers will now be fully compliant with the average weight legislation as complete documentation can be produced should they get a visit from the weights and measures inspectorate. Priced at around £20k the ROI will be less than a year as craft brewers won’t have to have an operative just carrying out weighing duties.”

The Radwag units come with a full oneyear guarantee, from then on, the Makro after sales and service team will have a comprehensive set of spares to look after any clients.

Richard concluded: “I have been looking for an affordable checkweigher for some time, as the craft brewers embrace cans as an alternative to glass. The need for this equipment has become paramount so

that they fully comply with the regulations.

The machines are available from stock so installation can be extremely quick.”

For more information go to www.makro-labelling.co.uk or email sales@makro-labelling.co.uk WWW.SIBA.CO.UK

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SIBA supplier news

SUPPLIER NEWS

Legal requirements for weighing are not clear, say 88% of breweries A new survey has found that 88% of UK breweries believe there is not enough awareness about the requirement for Trade Approved weighing scales in breweries.

However, three quarters of breweries are currently using Trade Approved weighing scales, according to a the survey conducted by weighing scales manufacturer Marsden.

Trade Approved weighing scales are a legal requirement when the price of an item or items is based on weight, and using unsuitable weighing equipment could result in a fine in excess of £1000 - and in the most extreme cases, imprisonment.

Using Trade Approved scales in breweries is essential, for example, when bottled goods displays the weight, or kegs are sold to customers based on the amount of beer inside. Non-approved weighing scales have not undergone the level of testing, and therefore may not have the same level of accuracy required for these tasks.

The results of the survey - which was

submitted to over 200 breweries in the UK - suggest that the requirement is not widely understood. Despite this, 75% of breweries who responded to the survey said they were using Trade Approved weighing scales.

David Smith, Marketing Director for Marsden, said: “Breweries need to be concentrating on making the perfect ales - not worrying about whether they’re using the right weighing scales. However, this survey tells us there needs to be more awareness amongst brewers of legal requirements for weighing - and we’re keen to do something about this, as well as make buying the right scales as easy as possible.”

Mark Coates, Operations Director at Marsden, added: “This year Marsden has had a record number of breweries calling us for help with buying suitable weighing scales. In almost every case they’ve been visited by Trading Standards or SALSA inspectors and been told the scales they’re using are not suitable. It’s encouraging to see so many breweries responding and saying they already used Approved scales

- but that leaves a quarter of breweries potentially at risk of heavy fines.”

Mark Easterbrook from Pheasantry Brewery, who took part in the survey, said: “The only reason I changed my weighing scales was my understanding was raised when I did the SALSA accreditation. We do cask and bottle beer so it’s important we can demonstrate that we comply with current regulations.”

Craig Fisher of Sheffield Trading Standards clarified the applications where Trade Approved scales are required in breweries.

He said: “Any checks that are carried out in breweries to ensure the volume being sold is accurate, must be done using Trade Approved equipment. The weighing of ingredients to be added to the recipe however is not controlled weighing, so the scale here does not need to be Trade Approved. Inspectors will check brewery scales to ensure they have the correct markings if they are deemed to be used for trade.”

For more information go to www.marsden-weighing.co.uk

NicheSolutions launches two new products for brewers 1) Protect your brews against LAB spoilage – and avoid yeast contamination Lysobier is a new, natural additive that helps you guard against a number of all-too-common problems in the brewery.

Best used as a means of prevention rather than a cure for lactic acid bacteria (LAB) spoilage and beer haze, Lysobier also works to protect your beer yeast, improves foam quality and extends shelf life into the bargain.

Produced from the white of an egg, Lysobier offers a valuable safeguard against the loss of a whole brew due to spoilage bacteria that arrive with ingredients. It enables you to avoid the risk of yeast contamination, allowing the natural (acidfree) washing of the yeast. And, by improving the stability of unpasteurised, IPA and craft beers, it offers the chance to expand their commercial opportunities.

Lysobier is produced by Bioseutica in the Netherlands, and is available in the UK from NicheSolutions.

green credentials but also because the all-in-one detergent can cut costs, working on biofilms as well as all the organic residues encountered during the production of beer.

It’s an ideal detergent for the deep, safe cleaning of filter plates, wort cooler and maturation, boiling and fermentation tanks. As a natural, non-caustic detergent, it’s safe to use alongside other cleaning products such as those which contain chlorine. And because it works at much lower temperatures, it’s more energy efficient.

Enzybrew 10 is available in the UK from NicheSolutions.

For more information go to www.NicheSolutionsGB.co.uk

2) An eco-friendly detergent Enzybrew 10 is an all-in-one, eco-friendly cleaning product, specially designed for the daily cleaning of microbrewery equipment.

It’s an enzyme-based, powdered detergent rather than a traditional caustic-based cleaning solution.

Enzybrew 10 is proving popular with brewers not only for its

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SIBA supplier news

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GEA steps out in refreshingly different style at BrauBeviale 2019 The GEA presentation at BrauBeviale from November 12–14, 2019 in Nuremberg (GEA booth in Hall 7/7-600) aims to surprise with a fresh take. This time, the specialist technology group is not only focusing on new products for the beverage industry but also on inviting customers to discuss their own specific expectations and challenges with GEA experts.

Solutions for craft brewers Although development across the global craft beer market is uneven, it has matured as a whole in recent years. As Oliver Jakob, Product Manager for Craft and Specialty Breweries at GEA, explains, retailers and restaurants favour reliable brands that deliver consistently high quality. Which is why the craft brewers who reject experimental hara-kiri in favour of carefully considered business plans and strategies that make them “relevant to their target group” will go the distance. Regional

marketing and even local identity can further this goal, he adds, noting that exporting is not always an appropriate target for creative brewers. “The aim should be to find a niche alongside the big, established names on the market. Drinkable beers need no further explanation,” Jakob says. “They are the kind that win over loyal fans who keep coming back for more.”

The GEA Craft Yeast Propagator, which GEA announced at BrauBeviale 2018, will take the stage this year. With capacities ranging from five to 25 hectoliters, the propagator has dimensions compatible with GEA’s 25- to 125-hectoliter brewsize CRAFT-STAR® and COMPACTSTAR®brewhouses.

And as the non-alcoholic beer trend is also spilling over into the craft beer market, it is also a focal topic at the GEA stand. These creative artisanal brews don’t need alcohol to expand their fan base. A case in point is the Ghost Ship Citrus Pale Ale 0.5% produced by Adnams in Southwold, UK,

which sailed to goldmedal success at the 2019 World Beer Awards.

Adnams began producing a low-alcohol version of its popular Ghost Ship Citrus Pale Ale 4.5% about a year ago using the GEA AromaPlus dealcoholisation unit. The system relies on reverse osmosis, which filters out the alcohol at the end of the brewing process, leaving 100 percent of the flavor but just 0.5 percent alcohol.

For more information go to www.gea.com

Brook House Hops celebrate with brewers at their first ever Annual Hop Walk

Based just beside the stunning Malvern hills, just off a country lane in Bromyard, independent hop supplier Brook House Hops boast just shy of 100 acres of hop fields.

They have been selling their UK hops to brewers all over the country since last year but this year was their first ever organised hop walk.

Alongside brewers from far and wide, the Brook House team joined representatives from Hobsons Brewery, Wye Valley Brewery and Marston’s Brewery on a day out at the farm, exploring the

long and luscious hop bines out in the fields and discussing the industry and what was next in store for beer.

Sebastian Nielsen, Sales Manager for the farm, said it was a great day of celebrating British produce: “Our ethos is to provide the best UK grown hop products to support brewers in their quest for the creation of unique, crafted products. We are unusual in that we sell hops directly to brewers, instead of through the big merchants. We want to directly support brewers and the hop walk was a great celebration of UK industry. We even had lunch provided by Legges – legendary 4th generation Bromyard butchers!”

A young, ambitious team, Brook House have a unique story to tell and were keen to spend a day with likeminded people with a passion for beer and hops. Their farm has a history of worldclass, award-winning hop cultivation thanks to the rich, red, Herefordshire soil and in the past, it was famous for all types of farming from rearing livestock to growing cider apples. They sell differently too – directly and not through hop merchants. By cutting out the middleman, they can listen more closely to trends and provide their customers with a personalised service.

Many brewers took the opportunity to grab some green hops – hops that are not yet dried, and therefore give the beer a uniquely fresh and crisp aroma. Green ale is a growing trend in brewing, and it tastes best when the hops are as fresh as can be.

Find out more at www.brookhousehops.com

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Crafty move to Crisp Malt Mike Benson has become the latest in a line of technical experts to join Crisp Malt in the past few years. His experience as a brewer and quality controller sets him in good stead for his new role. As craft brewing sales manager for the North West, he will be offering technical support to customers looking for help.

“Selling is only part of the remit,” says Mike. “Nowadays, brewers are looking to their suppliers to do more than just supply goods. They are after any relevant expertise on offer.

“At Crisp, providing meaningful support to customers is a huge part of the focus – and that’s going to be right up my street.

Whether it’s offering advice on recipe development, diving in to analyse and help solve problems or providing technical data and the newest scientific insights, it’s all an exciting challenge.”

Mike, who is a qualified engineer, started his career as a lab technician in Burtonwood at Thomas Hardy, which specialised in contract brewing and packaging.

Over a number of years, he gained his brewing qualifications and worked his way up to become brewing manager. Flavourmatching was a central part of his job, including when Molson Coors bought the business in 2015 – and a number of well-

known brands were under the spotlight.

More recently, Mike was head brewer at the Love Lane Brewery in Liverpool, overseeing the installation of plant, the development of brewing operations and the creation of its now well-loved beers.

“There’s not much Mike doesn’t know about flavour development and flavourmatching”, says Crisp sales director Steve LePoidevin. “This - combined with his practical and scientific background – means he can offer really useful support to brewers. Many of our customers in the region may already know him from his time as chair of the Institute of Brewing & Distilling (northern section).

Others will be meeting him soon.”

Other experts recently to join Crisp include chemical engineer Hannah Beer who has become the company’s technical development lead. She has been intricately involved with the new Speciality Malt Plant and the development of speciality malts.

In addition to her responsibilities on site, she has also been presenting to wider audiences including at British Guild of Beer Writer’s highly acclaimed Malt Seminar.

For more information go to www.crispmalt.co

Cotton Textile Company’s Richard King completes 25 runs for charity SNAP After over 600 kilometres, submersion in mud, dodging cattle and swimming across beaches the Cotton Textile Company’s Richard King was about to complete his final 25th run for SNAP Charity as the Journal went to press.

In January, Richard set out to raise money for SNAP charity, an essential organisation that supports the parents and carers of kids with mental and physical challenges and disabilities. After learning that 2019 is their 25 anniversary it was agreed that the challenge would be 25 runs.

Having raised over £1000 and helped to increase awareness of this amazing team of people who provide vital support and signposting that isn’t offered by the NHS or other health services he was now reaching the end as the Journal went to press.

On the 26th September Richard was due to run the final leg with supporters and members of the SNAP team between the Cotton Textiles office and SNAP’s headquarters. A short final run through the Essex towns of Hutton, Shenfield, Brentwood and Warley.

With support from local businesses including Active Life and Protect who have provided insurance and Bennetts Funeral Director, whose services Richard hasn’t personally benefitted from (yet!) as well as Hollington Associates Recruitment who are organising the final run, he was expected to raise even more money and to generate further awareness.

To donate please go to https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/cottontextileco WWW.SIBA.CO.UK

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“Specialising in the Manufacture and Supply of Keystone’s For Beer Barrels“ Our industry standard T.P.E. Rubber Keystones have been tried and tested by brewery’s na�onwide for over 15 Years.

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email either bernard.maples@thekatzgroup.com or Jenna at SIBA riponoffice@siba.co.uk

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SIBA supplier news

SUPPLIER NEWS

Multipack machines designed for smaller brewers T Freemantle, the UK based manufacturer of carton packing machinery, have a range of machines specifically targeted at the small to medium sized brewer.

Recent installations with the likes of Vocation Brewery and The London Beer Factory have helped the brewers to deliver multipacks carton board retail packs that offer high impact on shelf and also meet the increasing demand for fully recyclable packs.

Dan Sutcliffe, Vocation’s head of packaging, said: “T Freemantle helped us from start to finish with this project.

They shaved weeks off their stated lead times to enable us to receive the machine in the timescale we required. Installation was a breeze as the machine had been fully factory tested before it was shipped, we were using it in full production on installation day!”

Dan also added: “Easy to setup, maintain and clean. Changeover to different box

sizes is tool free and can be done in 5-10 minutes, we have had the machine for 12 months now and it’s not missed a day of production. I could and would recommend.”

The range of machinery on offer from T Freemantle includes simple semiautomatic machinery through to fully automatic equipment specifically designed for the canning and bottling applications.

The semi-automatic machinery can pack a wide range of different pack counts and can/bottle sizes on the same machine with minimal adjustment and typically suit speeds of up to 6,000 can/bottle per hour. For faster speeds of up to 15,000 per hour, the company also offer fully automated machinery which includes features such as automatic marshalling of the product straight from the canning or bottling machinery, fallen can/bottle detection, multipoint gluing to ensure pack strength and integrated pack coding.

In addition, T Freemantle has partnered with leading beverage packaging suppliers

Listing of upcoming Brewing Food & Beverage Industries Suppliers Association (BFBi) events Trade association the BFBi will be hosting or taking part in the following events during the rest of 2019 and the start of 2020:

To reserve a place at an event or for more information email siobhan.mcgonigle@bfbi.org.uk 2019 6th November

BFBi Breakfast Briefing, Lorien Engineering Solutions, Burton-on-Trent

8th November

BFBi Midland Section Lunch, Birmingham

12th – 14th November

Brau Beviale, Nuremberg, Germany

26th November

BFBi Eastern Section Indoor Football

6th December

BFBi Midland Section Christmas Gathering, Birmingham

19th December

BFBi Eastern Section Festive Drinks

WWW.SIBA.CO.UK

to offer a full pack design service to ensure packaging and machinery work seamlessly together. The company offers equipment for a range of different pack styles including fridge ready packs, grab packs and simple multipacks for counts between 4 and 12 cans or bottle per carton.

For more information go to www.tfreemantle.com

2020 14th January

BFBi Eastern Section Indoor Football

23rd January

Tour of Daniel Thwaites PLC, Blackburn

28th January

Challenge of Plastic Packaging Joint BFBi & IBD Southern Section Seminar, Hall & Woodhouse, Dorset

6th March

BFBi Northern Section Annual Lunch, Leeds

10th – 12th March

SIBA BeerX, Liverpool

19th March

Tour of Adnams Brewery & Distillery, Southwold, Suffolk

2nd April

BFBi Eastern Section Annual Dinner, Robinsons College, Cambridge

29th April

BFBi National Luncheon, Drapers' Hall, London

21st May

Tour of Curious Brewery & Chapel Down Winery tasting, Ashford, Kent

16th June

BFBi Midland Section House of Lords Annual Luncheon

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SIBA JOURNAL AUTUMN 2019

08:10

SIBA supplier news WBC launches new advent calendars You don't need an advent calendar to know that Christmas is coming, but opening a little numbered door to reveal a special gift is an idea that everyone can get behind!

No longer the sole dominion of the chocolatier, up and down the country more and more “adult” advent calendars are popping up.

To capitalise on this burgeoning market, WBC are proud to present two brand new advent calendars, specifically designed for the beer trade. Designed to hold 330ml cans, they come with sturdy internal

dividers and are available in both 12 and 24 can options, ensuring even the most discerning beer lover can fill their boots.

Storage shouldn’t be an issue, the advent calendars are supplied flat packed and can be assembled quickly, with a minimum order of just 5 units. This allows you to dip your toe into the advent calendar market without having to commit to large volumes. WBC also offers specific shipping outers for online retailing, allowing you to send your gifts safely through the post/ courier network.

For the brand-conscious, WBC offers a full personalisation service starting from just 100 units.

SUPPLIER NEWS

For more information contact Chris today on 020 7737 4040, or email him on chris@wbc.co.uk

SUPPLIER

viewpoint As tax relief on pension savings comes under increased government scrutiny, now might be the ideal time to hop your way into retirement planning, says Adam Ellis of Propsera Wealth Management…

“When you’re running your own business, there are so many demands on your time that it can be difficult to plan. So it’s no wonder that only 17% of the UK’s self-employed have a private pension. 1 The good news is that it can be relatively straightforward to put a retirement saving plan together. As Adam Ellis, Managing Partner at Prospera Wealth Management says: “Approach retirement planning as you would when you’re setting up a business. By understanding exactly where you stand now, and what you hope to achieve, you can make sure that you take the right steps to arrive at your objective.”

Why it pays to start planning now There’s one factor above all others that makes retirement planning so crucial: we are all living a lot longer than ever before.

We could spend up to a third of our lives in retirement. While that’s undoubtedly good news, it’s a long time to keep paying the bills, funding hobbies and finding cash for life’s little luxuries.

Clearly, no one can really expect to rely on the State Pension alone, as it is designed to cover just the basic needs. Not only that, the age at which someone can receive the State Pension is continually rising. By the year 2028, you won’t be able to draw a State Pension until you’re 67.

Act before the Chancellor does a U-turn There’s another reason why it could

be worth looking into your retirement plans sooner rather than later. As the newspapers and financial websites have been saying for months now, the current tax breaks available on pension savings are extremely generous and may not be around for much longer.

The Chancellor avoided making any changes to the tax relief in his latest budget, yet as the implications of Brexit in the New Year start to become clearer, he may be tempted to look at pensions tax relief again, particularly if the UK’s withdrawal from the EU leads to turbulence in the economy.

You’re in a good place Brewers are better placed than many other professionals to make the transition into retirement. Most are sole traders and are masters of their own time. If that’s your situation, then you have much more flexibility than several other employed and even self-employed workers. As you reach retirement age, you could decide to do a four-day week, for example, or take certain periods off work. You can choose to gradually move into retirement as you lessen your workload, rather than having to carry on working fully until you can receive the State Pension. By knowing your current situation and understanding exactly what savings you have put away and what type of income they could provide you with, you can then make an informed decision about whether you can slow down and ease into retirement gradually.

WWW.SIBA.CO.UK

Craft your future By putting your current situation under the spotlight, you can understand what kind of retirement you might be able to look forward to. Whether you have a pension that you’ve been paying into month in and month out, or you have a few savings accounts dotted here and there, it’s important to gain an understanding of what kind of income they could help to generate in future. If you haven’t currently got any savings in place, there are still reasons to be optimistic. Retirement planning isn’t solely about pensions, and you’ll find there are plenty of other options available to you.

Any plan is better than not having a plan at all. A financial adviser could help you consider other ways to save, such as ISAs, or look at options for freeing up some of the capital in your home.

Alternatively, you may be hoping for an inheritance in the future. Careful planning can help to optimise any returns, for instance by looking at how to protect an estate from Inheritance Tax or care fees.”

Sources: 1 Federation of Small Businesses, 2018

An informal, no-obligation discussion with an advisor from Prospera Wealth Management could help you find out exactly where you stand.

Call 0114 4786010 or email prosperawm@sjpp.co.uk to plan your next steps.

SIBA JOURNAL AUTUMN 2019

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GOLD AND SILVER MEMBERS

Gold Members BREWERS SELECT

Dan Unwin dunwin@brewersselect.co.uk

CHARLES FARAM & CO LTD Paul Corbett paulcorbett@ charlesfaram.co.uk

MURPHY & SONS LTD Hannah Waterfield hannah.waterfield@ murphyandson.co.uk

CLOSE BROTHERS BREWERY RENTALS

CROXSONS

PREMIER SYSTEMS LTD

THOMAS FAWCETT & SONS LTD

Tim Croxson Tim.croxson@ croxsons.com

Reem Mohsen enquiries@ closebreweryrentals.co.uk

NAPTHENS

Malcolm Ireland Malcolm.Ireland@ napthens.co.uk

Sam Williams Sam@ premiersystems.ltd.uk

James Fawcett james@fawcett-maltsters.co.uk

Quality, Consistency & Support

Silver Members ALFA LAVAL

IC FILLING SYSTEMS LTD

RANKIN BROTHERS & SONS

ANTON PAAR LTD

KEGSTAR

Hannah Brown hannah@kegstar.com

RASTAL GMBH & CO KG

Kerrie Swindon kerrie.swindon@anton-paar.com

BEATSON CLARK

LALLEMAND UK

Rebecca Halpin rebecca.halpin@alfalaval.com

Giovanni Solferini giovanni@icfsgroup.com

Jim Rankin jim@rankincork.co.uk Nick Crossley ncrssly@aol.com

SAXON PACKAGING LTD

Charlotte Taylor charlotte.taylor@beatsonclark.co.uk

Sarah Young syoung@lallemand.com

BEER BOX SHOP

MAKRO LABELLING

Simon Hulse simon@beerboxshop.co.uk

Richard richard@makro-labelling.co.uk

BFBI

MUNTONS PLC

Ruth Evans ruthevans@bfbi.org.uk

Joanna Perry joanna.perry@muntons.com

CORE EQUIPMENT LTD

NFU MUTUAL

LALLEMAND BREWING

Jonathan Chaplin jonathan.chaplin@core-equip.com

Darren Seward Darren_Seward@nfumutual.co.uk

CRISP MALTING GROUP

NORRIQ LTD

Nigel Gibbons nigel.gibbons@crispmalt.com

Helen Duffy Helen.Duffy@norriq.com

FESTIVAL GLASS LTD

PAKTECH OPI

Kelsey Cheesbrough sales@festivalglass.co.uk

Elizabeth Kouns elizabeth.kouns@paktech-opi.com

FLEXTECH HOSE SOLUTIONS LTD

PENTAIR FOOD & BEVERAGE SOLUTIONS

Gary Shaw gary@flextechhose.co.uk

FRAMAX UK LIMITED Elizabeth Smith esmith@framax.co.uk

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SIBA JOURNAL AUTUMN 2019

Debbie Larkin debbie.larkin@pentair.com

Suzy Harrold suzyharrold@saxonpackaging.co.uk

SCHAFER CONTAINER SYSTEMS

Mike Hickman mike.hickman56@outlook.com

VIGO LTD

Camilla camilla@vigoltd.com

WILLIS PUBLICITY

Carl Andrews carl@willispublicity.co.uk

ZOEDALE PLC

Tim Guest tim@zoedale.co.uk

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MEET THE SIBA REGIONAL ELECTED DIRECTORS

regional elected directors NAME: GREG MASKALICK, DRAYCOTT BREWING COMPANY REGION: EAST MIDLANDS CONTACT: greg.maskalick@siba.co.uk How did you first get into brewing?

Like most people, as a home brewer. Upon retirement from teaching I plugged some money into a small brewery kit. You could say I am a nano brewery as I am a 1.5 barrel plant. I hope to upgrade to 3 or 4 barrels one day.

How long have you been involved with SIBA and why did you join?

I’ve been a member of SIBA for 4 years and I joined to gain a more professional approach to brewing and product placement… Also, the networking is massively important.

NAME: IAN RYDINGS, LEIGH ON SEA BREWERY REGION: EASTERN CONTACT: ian.rydings@siba.co.uk How did you first get into brewing?

A Christmas (2016) pub crawl in Leigh-on-Sea got out of hand…! An old friend, Mark Springham and I somehow thought setting up our own brewery would be a thing. When he was made redundant on returning to work in January 2017 (I was already early retired) it felt to us it was meant to be!

How long have you been involved with SIBA and why did you join?

Mark and I decided to take a Brew School course (on running a microbrewery) in Bakewell March 2017, and that we’d make our final decision on whether to set up or not following that. On the course we found out that BeerX UK was being held the following weekend in Sheffield. We attended, and it was a straightforward decision to join SIBA right then as non-brewing members. At BeerX UK we made great contacts, identified our future brew kit and cleared up a lot of key decisions on planning our set up..

What is your favourite part of your SIBA role?

I feel it’s too early to say for me at the moment – I’m very much still in learning mode about the role. I’m finding it hugely helpful to be part of the regional director network, seeing the views and analysis of a group with far more experience of the industry than I have.

How do the regions support SIBA members?

To be honest I think there’s a lot to do to make the answer more than “run an annual beer competition”. There’s definitely a potentially useful network there, but for that to operate well, meetings would need to be much better supported than they are now.

How can Members get more involved in SIBA locally?

Talking to other brewers to see what their issues and concerns are and bringing them to the attention of the Board. I also enjoy the camaraderie and building of professional contacts so that we are all working as a team to set ever higher standards.

Well the first obvious thing is to try to get to regional meetings – but I know through my own experience that in small busy organisations that’s incredibly difficult given the regional geography. I’d welcome more virtual networking, and that would certainly be easily achievable with the technology we all enjoy. Being a bit more visionary I’d love to see SIBA develop some kind of regional/local wholesale cooperative. I suppose that’s what I’d like Beerflex to be (rather than what feels like a stand-alone commercial organisation, operating primarily in its own interest rather than that of brewers).

How do the regions support SIBA members?

What’s new in your area of SIBA this year?

What is your favourite part of your SIBA role?

Meetings mainly but this is something that needs to be developed further. However, we are all volunteers and we need to keep that in mind when doing anything.

How can Members get more involved in SIBA locally?

Call your Regional Reps and ask questions. Attend any meetings that are on and plan events together with other breweries. It is so easy to forget when you are having a brewery event and not include SIBA in your publicity…

What’s new in your area of SIBA this year?

We are now trying to get together a committee of people to sort out a format and direction for future beer festival competitions. I would like to see a social or two happen and will try to plan one myself.

What is your key focus for your brewery this year?

Small equipment upgrades that enable us to make even better quality beer. And to swap with a wider network of breweries across the region and further afield.

What is your favourite beer in your region other than your own?

A Fist Full of Hops from Falstaff Brewery and Tuck from Lincoln Green.

Who do you most admire in the brewing community and why?

Anthony Hughes of Lincoln Green. He has developed an amazing brewery and pub chain in a very short time. As a business man he is top notch. As a brewer he brews incredible award winning beers. As a person he is superb.

We’re investigating moving the annual beer competition to a greater population centre. Currently we’re lucky to hold it in the fantastic setting of Elgoods Brewery in Wisbech but we appreciate that’s in a location which a lot of people find hard to get to. I hate the thought of all that lovely beer (which brewers have provided free as the cost of entering the competition) going to waste, as the following beer festival is not of a scale for it all to get drunk!

What is your key focus for your brewery this year?

Honestly – it’s having enough money in the bank at the end of each quarter to be able to pay the VAT bill! But on a more strategic level, we’re trying to move from selling cask in ones and twos to more efficient larger orders to wholesalers – even though that means compromising on price. We’ve been producing keg conditioned beer since we started and we’re also trying to prioritise that alongside cask (even though cask beer is my first love) as the returns are better. And we’re also concentrating on direct sale to the public through our Taproom – which features in CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide for the first time this year, and through off site events.

What is your favourite beer in your region other than your own?

I’m sad enough to have referred to my Untappd check-ins record to help with this! I’m not surprised with what that tells me though; in the wider region Lacons Audit Ale, and on a more local level Cockleboats Best Bitter from our neighbours George’s Brewery.

Who do you most admire in the brewing community and why?

I couldn’t embarrass one person by singling them out for this! Starting up we were bowled over by the generosity of other brewers prepared to share their knowledge to support incomers (not necessarily what you’d expect given the competitiveness of the industry). I’d particularly thank Steve Dunkley of Beer Nouveau and Ed Bright from Stubborn Mule; both of whom shared sensitive price/cost info to help our planning. Also, recognising how vital it is that the perception of beer is shifted, it’s hugely helpful to have people other than older white men (like me and most of the SIBA directors!) doing it. So I’ve the greatest of respect for people like Jaega Wise and Emma Inch, challenging the stereotypes – it must be hard work! Similarly, closer to home I’d recognise our local CAMRA chair Maggie Pinto. Our local CAMRA, firmly on the modern wing of CAMRA have been incredibly supportive to us from day one.

Finally, and obviously personally, another woman – my wife Gaby! Three years ago she’d have fainted if thought of as being “in the brewing community” but she has worked alongside Mark and I to establish Leigh on Sea Brewery and is as much in the thick of brewing as we are.

WWW.SIBA.CO.UK

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contacts SIBA Head Office: 01765 640441 Cellar Services: 01765 641099

SIBA TEAM James Calder Chief Executive james.calder@siba.co.uk Sara Knox Company Secretary/ Directors Assistant sara.knox@siba.co.uk

Rachel Harriott Head of Operations rachel.harriott@siba.co.uk

Louise Henley Operations Administrator louise.henley@siba.co.uk

Neil Walker Head of Comms & Marketing neil.walker@siba.co.uk

Jenna Barningham Operations Administrator jenna.barningham@siba.co.uk

Barry Watts Head of Public Affairs & Policy barry.watts@siba.co.uk

Elle Spencer-Blanchard Operations Assistant elle.spencerblanchard@siba.co.uk

Rebecca Kirby Financial Controller rebecca.kirby@siba.co.uk All General Enquiries contact riponoffice@siba.co.uk

BOARD OF ELECTED DIRECTORS Existing members wishing to contact your regional representatives can use the relevant regional e-mail addresses listed below. For individuals, just type firstname.lastname@siba.co.uk Chairman of SIBA Ian Fozard

EAST east@siba.co.uk Ian Rydings Marcus Beecher Richard Naisby

106

Leigh on Sea Brewery Elgood & Sons Ltd Milton Brewery

SCOTLAND scotland@siba.co.uk Christie Slater Loch Leven Brewery Isle of Arran Brewery Gerald Michaluk Harviestoun Brewery Stuart Cail

MIDLANDS midlands@siba.co.uk Greg Maskalick Draycott Brewing Company John Allcroft Grafton Brewing Co Lincoln Green Brewing Co Ltd Anthony Hughes

SOUTH EAST southeast@siba.co.uk Andy Hayward Thames Side Brewery Jaega Wise Wild Card Brewery Westerham Brewery Robert Wicks

NORTH EAST northeast@siba.co.uk Roosters Brewery Ian Fozard Maxim Brewery Mark Anderson Hop Studio Ltd Dave Shaw

SOUTH WEST southwest@siba.co.uk Exe Valley Brewery Guy Sheppard Driftwood Spars Brewery Peter Martin Red Rock Brewery Paul Arrowsmith

NORTH WEST northwest@siba.co.uk Shane Swindells Cheshire Brewhouse Bank Top Brewery Dave Sweeney Peerless Brewery Steve Briscoe

WALES & WEST west@siba.co.uk Norman Pearce Corvedale Brewery Teme Valley Brewery Chris Gooch Big Hand Brewing Company Ltd Dave Shaw

SIBA JOURNAL AUTUMN 2019

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