Open day at Dawkins Brewery, Bristol

We've enjoyed beer from Dawkins Brewery for years now so we jumped at the chance to visit their new site in the heart of Easton, Bristol. Here are a few photos- just look at the lushness of this new 20bbl kit.

After the Brewlab course we're both become really interested in heat exchangers so here's a shot of their shiny new one for those of you with a similar obsession...

...and here are our two lads with a friend they made at the open day. We got to sample some of their  special 'Mosaic' as well so a very great morning was had by all!

Brewlab Start Up Brewing Course: Day 3

The third day at Brewlab started with tours of three very different breweries,  Three Kings- a 5bbl brewery in its first year; Mordue Brewery- 20bbl brewery established in 1995 that also bottles under contract and finally Big Lamp Brewery- a brewpub with a 10bbl kit that is installed inside an old pumping station and over several floors.

We had to sign a waver about sharing industrial information that we learned during these tours so I can't go into detail about what we learned from the visits but the brewers who showed us around were all really informative and passionate and it was fabulous to have honest industrial insight into the current realities of the brewing industry. It's clear that these guys are in it for the love of a great pint of beer rather than profit- they were all fiercely proud of their beer and rightly so. Happily we also got to have lunch at the Big Lamp Brewery and were able to sample some of their delicious beer!

Brewlab's course is by no means cheap but they really did pack a lot into the three days and provided a very good first overview of the small-scale craft brewing process and the business basics. We were really pleased that we invested in the course as it has given us focus and a better insight about the challenges that we're going to face and it hasn't put us off despite the honest and somewhat gloomy picture that was portrayed about the industry.

The refrain that we picked up throughout the course was the importance of consistency in your brewing method in order to produce a consistently good quality beer. This consistency is something that we can only dream of in our kitchen set-up without temperature controlled fermenting vessels so the lure of that industrial kit is even stronger now!

Brewlab Start Up Brewing Course: Day 2

Day 2 was more about the business-side of starting up your own brewery including marketing, publicity, tax & excise and of course buying and setting up your own kit. Even with the help given to smaller breweries in the UK and in Ireland the amount of tax that you have to pay is daunting when you start to factor it into your projections and I doubt many drinkers really consider the impact that this has on the profit margins that small craft breweries can achieve- I don't think we'd really thought about it that much when we've moaned about the price of a decent pint. 

Truly craft brewing is a labour of love first and not something to go into to get rich quick!

In the evening we got the metro into Newcastle and explored a couple of the many awesome pubs there- The Bridge Tavern's microbrewery setup was beautiful as were their beers- we'd highly recommend a trip there if you go on the Brewlab course.

The Bridge Tavern's beautiful micro brewery

Brewlab Start Up Brewing Course: Day 1

The first day we went straight into water treatment, the biology of yeast and the chemistry and biology behind the brewing process- it was a baptism by chemistry, maths and biology but actually it inspired more than it deterred which is hopefully a good sign. Our water in Bristol is notoriously hard so the information about different styles of beer and the optimal chemical makeup of your liquor was particularly interesting as it's not something that we've experimented with yet. How will Martin's favourite IPA recipe differ once we've analysed the water and adjusted the levels of sulphate?

 On day one we covered liquor, yeast, malt, hops, recipe formation, wort production, mashing, wort boiling and chilling and finally fermentation- it was a head-spinning introduction to theory of brewing on a larger scale than we're used to. It was fascinating stuff and our tutor Arthur was incredibly experienced, knowledgable and honest about the reality of setting up a brewery in the present market.

Hops, some of the kit at Brewlab and their incredibly cool bar-under-the-stairs

Adventures in brewing

If you wanted to start up your own brewery where would you start? We've been dreaming about brewing our own beer on a bigger scale for years- Martin's home brewing kit dominates our kitchen, the freezer is packed with tubs of dried, frozen, homegrown hops and every available cupboard has bottles of beer conditioning at the back of it but how do you take that next step once you have brewing in the blood...?

Everything from our freezer has an odd, hop-like character...

We've read some very good books, we've done a lot of research online, we've drunk a lot of good beer but we decided that the best place to test our resolve and start our serious business planning was to go on the three day 'Start Up Brewing' course at Brewlab in Sunderland.

This blog will follow our family's journey as we set our course towards setting up our own brewery in a new country- we've no idea where our adventure will ultimately lead us but then, that's half the fun isn't it? Thanks for joining us!