Hop Forward: Getting You Ahead in the Brewing and Beer Business

When I floated the idea of doing a mini-series exploring some of the underbelly of the beer industry back in January, I was flooded with private messages from brewers and bar staff sharing their personal stories, many of whom started with the prerequisite: ‘I'd like to share anonymously…!’

It seems that discussing topics such as workplace treatment, remuneration for overtime, expectations from business owners, and general emotional and physical well-being seems to be something that we talk about in hushed tones.

As I alluded to in last week’s into to The Under Beer Belly of a #BrewersLife, while these examples certainly don’t exist across the board, they present themselves under the cover of darkness.

Beneath the veneer of an X Pro or Valencia filter, you will hear stories of low pay, long hours, feeling undervalued and excessive drinking.

Allow me to emphasise, I know many brewery and bar owners who run companies that treat their employees with respect and due care, rewarding them with good pay, flexible working hours, the correct training and PPE, and token gestures such as growler Fridays or team pizzas.

But there are examples of inexperienced people entering the industry and working for peanuts because they’re desperate to get their foot on the brewing professional ladder, working for £12K per annum as a head brewer, with minimum pensions contributions and not much else to show for the long, tireless hours.

The moral of the story is simple - for both employer and employee alike: “do to other people as you would have them do unto you”.

Having put this contentious topic out there, I was contacted by a fellow Brit and former brewing professional - now living in America - who was worked for numerous breweries, both large and small, to discuss some of the issues surrounding well being and mental health in the beer industry.

Mike McGuigan, who was worked for various breweries throughout 20+ years, left the industry little over a year ago having had the last straw working for a small, startup American craft brewer.

He shares his personal story and reflection on - what I consider to be - one of the main issues that the beer industry is not facing up to: how many of its workers - the heart and soul of many brewhouses (it’s operatives) - are not tenderly cared for.

In this episode, we look at some of the mental and emotional impacts of working in brewing, the financial ramifications for many of its operatives, the two way support that needs to take place between employee and business owners alike, and the excessive drinking that can creep in just to keep a lid on it all.

---

This week’s brewery shoutout goes to our good friends at Lord's Brewing Co in Huddersfield. Get their latest Handbook Session IPA - Pride Before The Fall - and more great beers from their webshop www.lordsbrewing.com using the code #hopforward for £5 off your order.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be exploring the lesser savoury part of the beer industry that are less obvious to most while searching through Instagram or discussing their favourite beers over Twitter.

I am, of course, talking about The Under Beer Belly of a #BrewersLife.

We’ll be taking a deep dive into topics such as mental health, well-being in the workplace, sexism, alcoholism and more as we re-imagine what the beer industry might look like post COVID-19.

This week, we catch up with Wild Card Brewery’s Jaega Wise and Dent Brewery’s Lauran Hardkness at SIBA Beer X in March to talk about sexism within the beer industry and how marketing plays a big role in how women are perceived, not just in beer but throughout wider society.

This week’s brewery shoutouts go to our good friends at Neptune Brewery (www.neptunebrewery.com) and Heist Brew Co in Sheffield (www.heistbrewco.com). Make sure you check our their wonderful beers and order them online.

Follow us on social media Subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review

Visit hopforward.beer to find out how we can get you ahead in the brewing and beer business through branding, marketing, and business development.

What is the deposit return scheme? On this week's episode of the Hop Forward Podcast, recorded in March at Beer X, we discuss with SIBA Head of Public Affairs, Barry Watts, and Scottish brewers Ride Brew Co and Loch Leven Brewery about how the proposed Deposit Return Scheme will affect brewers from across the country.

While the focus and emphasis for the industry and the wider world is fixed upon dealing with the COVID19 outbreak, a larger emergency is looming over the face of the earth: climate change.

If action isn't taken, the global impacts of climate change will overshadow a health pandemic, dwarfing it in terms of impact and day-to-day living.

The Deposit Return Scheme is one of the many ways in which the UK government seeks to encourage recycling on a wider scale. But who is truly impacted here? The consumer or the producer, that is liable for the additional cost and management of putting containers into the market?

A complicated and confusing topic at best, we sit down over a few beers to try to unpick the scheme, let alone the implications!

---

BREWERY SHOUTOUTS

Every week, we're giving brewery shoutouts and exclusive offers for our podcast listeners to some of the UK's best brewers and beer businesses. These are breweries we've known and loved, or have supported the podcast in some way. Make sure you check out their beers...!

McColls Brewery

Get an exclusive Hop Forward 10% discount McColls range of beers using the code HOPFORWARD (1 per customer). Check out their divine Beet de Garde, 7.0% Beetroot Biere de Garde.

Budweiser Budvar

---

Follow us on social media Subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review

Visit hopforward.beer to find out how we can get you ahead in the brewing and beer business through branding, marketing, and business development.

Every April, people from across North America and around the world flock to America’s largest craft brewing industry gathering: the Craft Brewers Conference.

Sharing education, knowledge and ideas, the trade show is led by the top minds in the world of beer and business.

For many brewers and beer professionals, this is an annual pilgrimage to not only consume information but to sample great beers. It’s evident when you look at the wealth of resources for brewers to come out of the States how passionate Americans are over craft beer. The CBC is just one example, but you don't have to look far to see evidence elsewhere.

One such forum aimed at promoting and protecting American craft brewers is none other than the CBC's hosts, the Brewers Association.

The Brewers Association is a not-for-profit trade association comprised of over 5,400 brewers members, 46,000 American Homebrewers Association members, and allied trade, beer wholesalers, retailers and other associate members.

However, the Brewers Association isn’t just a resource for America alone. Brewers and beer professionals from other countries and continents, including the UK & Europe, are able to join and enjoy member benefits. These include articles, access to seminars online, education publications, and their magazine, The New Brewer.

How America will fare during the current climate is anyone’s guess, especially without getting too political. However, the land of the home and brave and its beer professionals will have to band together more than ever to see its 8000+ breweries come through the other side.

The landscape of US craft beer has been changing of late anyway. The keynote talk at the CBC Online from Bart Watson entitled The State of the Craft Brewing Industry, highlights many of the changes.

However, it will no doubt will look very different in the months and years that lay ahead as it picks up the pieces of their broken economy.

So, in some ways, it’s hard to publish today’s episode - recorded at BrewLDN in February this year - and discuss with Lotte Peplow what makes American craft beer and their brewers great and the reverence for many beer drinkers across the world.

Lotte Peplow, is the Brewers Association American Craft Beer Ambassador for Europe. She’s a certified Cicerone®, Beer Sommelier, beer judge, beer writer, homebrewer, beer & food pairer!

As you can tell, she’s really into beer…!

It was a privilege to sit across a table with her backstage at BrewLDN and share some fresh beers to come from the States, to talk about American craft beer, why independence is so important, equality in the industry, and a wide range of other topics that - at the time of recording - seemed like the most important thing.

Hard to believe now as our focus is redefined on merely surviving with our health, our business, and our industry intact.

Any events that Lotte and I discuss on the show have been cancelled up until September. After that, who knows what might happen… both with the immediate events as hosted by the Brewers Association and the future of American craft beer.

this week's episode of the Hop Forward Podcast, we catch up with Redchurch Brewery's Head of Operations, Rachael Reynolds, to talk about recovering from crowdfunding and the troubles that plagued the brewery in 2019.

In essence, crowdfunding is a great idea, allowing die-fans and casual followers the opportunity to make a difference to a project; to do good while allowing others to brew good.

As a relatively new practise, those looking to crowdfund have largely had to navigate through uncharted water.

Although crowdfunding finds an unlikely beginning in 18th century Germany, where German authors would take cash pre-orders for books they had yet to write, it wasn’t until 2001 when a website called ArtistShare became the internet’s first fan-funding platform and became the blueprint for today’s modern crowdfunding sites, such as IndieGoGo and Kickstarter.

For a season, it seemed as if crowdfunding was the golden ticket to securing the growth capital required to kickstart or take a brewing venture to the next level. Brewers across the globe took to platforms such as Kickstarter, Crowdcube, and Seedrs to reach out directly to their fans and ask their communities for cash in exchange for perks and merch, and - as time went on - shares and part ownerships, many of which came with inflated valuations.

But what happens when crowdfunding leaves a sour taste in people’s mouths?

Most notably in the UK, when people think of brewery crowdfunding, two names often arise - Woolwich based Hop Stuff Brewery, which raised over £1.5m through investors only to have the brewery seized by the landlord after failing to make rent on account of unpaid debts, delayed accounts and other financial difficulties.

The second is Harlow based brewery, Redchurch.

But after the social media storm has died down, what becomes of a business like Redchurch Brewery? How do the news owners or the staff, the few faithful who endured the chaos, re-emerge and pick up the pieces?

How do you go about rebuilding damaged consumer and customer relationships and tell them things are different now?

How do you rebuild trust in a brewery and brand that’s had its name tainted and dragged through the mud by the actions of individuals who no longer represent the business? How do you reassure those who had their fingers burned first time around?

This is one of the many challenges that the team at Redchurch have been asking as they look to re-establish themselves in the market.

I was fortunate enough to get some time with Rachael at BrewLDN in February, to drink some beer and to hear their side of the story - casualties themselves of the poor decisions made by the original founders, albeit in a much different way.

But I don’t want to give too much away…!

What I want to do is to allow them to tell their side of the story, because there is always another side to the story...!

---

BREWERY SHOUTOUTS

Every week, we're giving brewery shoutouts and exclusive offers for our podcast listeners to some of the UK's best brewers and beer businesses. These are breweries we've known and loved, or have supported the podcast in some way. Make sure you check out their beers...!

THE CHESHIRE BREWHOUSE - Fantastic beers with brilliant artwork from Shane and the team. Get an exclusive mixed case from their webshop using the code HF12 from this link: Click here to shop now

FULL CIRCLE BREW CO - New beers from Newcastle upon Tyne's newest brewery. Great collab series, specials and core range not to be missed. Click here and use the code HOPFORWARD

TURNING POINT BREW CO - Disco balls and more, including a range of collaboration with some of the UK's biggest names in beer. Use the code APRIL20 for 15% off your order on their webstore.

---

Follow us on social media Subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review

Visit hopforward.beer to find out how we can get you ahead in the brewing and beer business through branding, marketing, and business development.

How do we make sense of a world suffering a health pandemic and economic recession?  Will the beer industry ever recover from this?  What will happen to my business, my job, my family, my income...?

These are the kinds of questions we find ourselves asking at the moment during these unprecedented times.

I'm sure you're probably sick of having your pint glass filled daily with the latest COVID19 news cycle, but it is impossible to escape the questions that haunt each one of us on both a global and personal level. The ramifications are huge!

I've been pondering the balance to strike with the Hop Forward Podcast.  Should I persist in covering the pandemic through the lens of the beer industry (or bottom of a pint glass) or plough on as normal, delivering the great content I'd amassed before all this happened? The answer is both.

So, while I'll be giving space to many of the stories and discussions that took place before the coronavirus outbreak in the coming weeks, I wanted to turn over the podcast to some of our listeners to share - in their own words - the challenges and the positives that are coming out of the current climate for their business and the wider industry.

In this episode, we explore the supply chain, speaking to brewers, bar and bottle shop owners, and suppliers, to get a flavour, perspective and overview of what is happening out there whilst we’re all in isolation.

Today's show features Karl Morris from Oasthouse Engineering; Sienna O’Rouke from Pressure Drop, Columba Cryan from Round Corner Brewing; Ricardo Cacildo from Cerveja D'os Diabos; Marie Selnes from Taproom Social; and Dave Hayward from A Hoppy Place.

I hope this gives you some encouragement in your situation.

Our brewery shoutouts this week go to Ride Brew Co, Utopian Brewing and Redchurch Brewery. Make sure you check them out and listen to the show for discount codes on their delicious beers!

Follow us on social media Subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review

Visit hopforward.beer to find out how we can get you ahead in the brewing and beer business through branding, marketing, and business development.

The history of pub ownership is a long, complex one, as you will no doubt hear from today’s episode with long standing publican Mark Dodds will attest.

Mark, who once ran the Sun & Doves in Camberwell, South London - Time Out Magazine’s runner up for Best Bar of the Year in 1996 as well as a string of other awards - is no stranger to the tied pub system.

Having first hand witnessed the effects of the corporate boot, including being evicted and declared bankrupt, Mark has been passionate pursuing the People’s Pub Partnership - the dream of an ethical and sustain pub company that gives full autonomy to the licensee while maintaining a clear set of values that allow the publican to reinvest into the pub and pull pint after pint of perfectly kept beer.

Sounds utopian doesn’t it?

Pubs have been slowly but surely closing their doors for one last time. And while some have found a new lease of life from local breweries, many have sadly shut up shop, only to become a Metro supermarket or converted into flats.

And with beer cellars literally battening down the hatches and front doors firmly closed for who-knows-how-long due to the global pandemic that is sweeping across the world, how many of our pubs will be wiped off the face of the earth over the coming months and years?

Because if the coronavirus doesn’t kill the vibrant independent pub trade, then perhaps pub companies will!

In this episode, Mark breaks down the complexities surrounding why tenanted pub companies are so bad for the humble pub and offers a more ethical, sustainable alternative.

Sign up to our 7 day mini-podcast series The Winchester Beer Business Survival Kit. Head over to thewinchester.hopforward.beer to download your kit today.

Follow us on social media Subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review

Visit hopforward.beer to find out how we can get you ahead in the brewing and beer business through branding, marketing, and business development.

How can breweries, bars and pubs survive the Coronavirus outbreak in the United Kingdom? That’s the burning question that is on everyone’s lips at the moment.

The hospitality industry has been quick to react to Boris Johnson’s government statement urging Britons ‘to avoid pubs, clubs, restaurants and theatres and to only make essential journeys in the “national fightback” against coronavirus’.

Without closing these spaces, many have been unable to claim on their insurance, if they were ever able to at all.

And what of the supply chain? Cloudwater’s Paul Jones took to Twitter to demonstrate the sheer amount of people and hours involved in the supply chain that goes in every single pint.

On the podcast this week, we talk to Chris Wright from the Pubs Advisory Service and get Emily Heward‘s – Manchester Evening News’ food & drinks editor – take on the situation and what pubs, bars and breweries can do throughout these challenging days that lay during the COVID19 outbreak.

Have a nice cold pint and wait for all this to blow over…

In addition to this week’s episode, we are launching The Winchester Beer Business Survival Pack.

By signing up to our mailing list, you will receive over the course of 7 days (and a bonus day, afterall, in brewing it’s 8 days a week!) insights and advice on how you and your beer business can survive the coronavirus outbreak.

Click here to get The Winchester Beer Business Survival Pack

Follow us on social media Subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review

Visit hopforward.beer to find out how we can get you ahead in the brewing and beer business through branding, marketing, and business development.

This month, the Society of Independent Brewers Association - SIBA - celebrates its 40 year of championing independent beer in the UK.

SIBA has achieved some monumental things, including lobbying for SBR (Small Brewers Relief), helping independent brewers sell their beers into PubCos through Beerflex, and gathering beer professionals from all corners of the industry for Britain's largest brewery trade show - Beer X.

SIBA have not been without their troubles over the last 40 years, receiving their fare share of flack when purchasing a major stake in beer supplier the Flying Firkin, as well as grumblings from members and former members over the ABV branding pricing structure when selling to estates such as Greene King and Admiral Inns.

However, optimism is on the rise in the relatively newly appointed Chief Executive - James Calder - who has taken a much needed hands on approach with its members, bringing a breath of fresh air to many of its members.

It’s been a road of ups and downs for the Voice of British Brewing. Considering the length of time the body has been established in contract to the US equivalent, the Brewers Association, though SIBA does not have the same level of resources at its disposal, the membership and supplier associates club together in regional meetings to offer advice, debate and comradery.

So, this week, on the Hop Forward Podcast, we are joining the festivities and wishing SIBA a Hoppy Birthday, bringing an interview with Rooster’s Brewery owner and National Chairman, Ian Fozard.

Ian has an extensive history in the beer industry, running various pubs and a large brewery and taproom based on the outskirts of Harrogate. In this episode, we discuss many of the issues SIBA members - and any independent brewer - faces on an everyday basis: beer duty, pricing, running a business, developing a brand, and making beer!

Follow us on social media Subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review

Visit hopforward.beer to find out how we can get you ahead in the brewing and beer business through branding, marketing, and business development.

The old adage goes that brewing is 90% cleaning, 10% paperwork. Like all sayings, there's an element of truth hidden within.

Brewer's spend vast amounts of time cleaning vessels, packaging lines, containers and just about anything that comes into contact with wort and beer.

And with good reason.

Lurking between those heat exchanger plates, elbows, valves, and just about anywhere that's everywhere, is a world of microbiology - wild yeasts - all hungry for a sugary feast to multiply and rock their world.

But it doesn't stop there. Within your brewhouse are biofilms: a thin but robust layer of mucilage clinging to a solid surface containing a community of beer spoilage microorganisms.

In this episode of the Hop Forward Podcast, we were invited to sit down with Paul Browning - an independent hygiene consultant to NichesolutionsGB, amongst other food and beverage companies - to chat about why brewery hygiene is essential to your beer business.

This episode contains some deep cuts into the world of microbiology, so make sure you grab a pen and paper, and take notes!

Today’s episode has been brought to you by NichesolutionsGB

For all of your brewery cleaning and biofilm queries, contact NicheSolutionsGB where Paul Browning is a consultant.

NichesolutionsGB can advise you on the use of all their cleaning products, can organise site visits and staff training days. Enzybrew 10 is an effective way to combat biofilms, used occasionally as part of your regular cleaning regime.

Make sure you visit their website nichesolutionsgb.co.uk to find out more and connect with the team at this year's SIBA Beer X at Liverpool Exhibition Centre on Stand 99.

Follow us on social media Subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review

Visit hopforward.beer to find out how we can get you ahead in the brewing and beer business through branding, marketing, and business development.