In 2002 I joined Sharp’s Brewery. Back then it was a successful micro making 10,000 brewers barrels per year, it is now twenty times that size and Doom Bar is the best-selling cask ale in the UK. At university I won the Institute of Brewing and Distilling Sir William Walters-Butler, Brewer’s Guild and Bass prizes for my work. In 2007 I was runner up for the Institute of Brewing and Distilling International Young Member of the Year. In 2011 I won the All Parliamentary Party Beer Group Brewer of the Year. I won’t list the prizes my beers have won as it will only bore you. Has this success made me big headed? So it would seem. I am still far from as good a brewer as I strive to be and I am working unreasonably hard to get there.
I am incredibly privileged to work in the brewing industry: brewers are the nicest people in the world. My raison d’être as a brewer is to make great beers which appeal to true connoisseurs but at the same time are accessible to the average drinker. Nice drinks in their own right. I don’t like bullshit and I don’t like mass appeal dross so I don’t want to make that. To me an insipid commodity lager is no worse than a beer brewed on a small scale with care and passion which tastes like sipping a Glade Plug in. To me, the basis of the world’s greatest beers is all about balance and subtlety. Aside from boasting incessantly the idea of this blog is to share my passion for brewing with the world. I am convinced that people will be happier and more fulfilled if they embrace, understand and revere great beer and my blog is meant to help bring this about. In my spare time I enjoy Dutch and Italian gabber, rowing (both pronunciations), eating and sleeping.
Hallelujah praise the beer!