T|E|H : Meet the Brewers – An interview with the Brew Brothers from Meanwood Brewery

Hello, my fellow beer lovers,

Today we are talking to hopefully the first in a series of local brewers / breweries in the Leeds Area.

These two Brew Brothers are the co-owners of the Meanwood Brewery. Like everyone else they have been hit hard by the current YoYo approach the government is taking to businesses, especially breweries and pubs!

However, despite this they have been incredibly upbeat and went above and beyond to ensure that they did this interview with me, and even hand delivered some of their ‘The Love You make, East Coast Pale Ale 4.5% to me, so in my book they truly are heroes among men!

I will be reviewing the beers shortly so keep your eyes peeled, but if they’re half as good as these guys are reliable, its going to be a cracking brew!

Now, Meanwood Brewery was founded in 2017 by these two beer-loving brothers Baz & Graeme Phillips , and it is a new up and coming brewery in the Leeds area. They have a history of experimenting with various styles from around the world; which has led them to take risks and attempt to push the boundaries of brewing and flavor. After years of hard work, they have now opened their own taproom in the heart of Meanwood named Terminus, which is named after the old tram terminus in Meanwood.

“Good Morning Lads, Thanks again for agreeing to do an interview with me today, to kick things off can you tell us how your beer is connected to the local area?” 

The name of the brewery, the taproom, our ethos, its all about our local community. We always conceived of the tap as being totally inclusive; for everyone irrespective of any divisions that may exist in the world at large. In order for our tap to be that we knew we had to produce a wide variety of beer styles so everyone could find something they love. That’s why we create contemporary versions of British classics like our Heroic IPA which is a reimagined English IPA, as well as things like our best bitter Crambazzled, alongside beers like Bubby Rascal which is a raspberry ripple pale and Doodadeladadad blueberry cheesecake IPA. Its that convergence of new and old, revivifying traditions as well as making new ones; straddling the line between the known and the unknown. A community is as diverse as the number of individuals that comprise it. We’ve still got a way to go before we’ve made a beer of everyone mind!

“You have some very interestingly named beers in your collection, how do you come up with them? as Doodadeladadad may roll off the tongue, but it’s not something that for me at least, would immediately spring to mind?”

Most of our beers are named using archetypes and narrative structure, tying the beer style to a particular archetype. For example, our IPAs are named for the various types of heroes. In its most general form, the hero of a story goes out into the world, overcomes some challenge, and then returns home with treasure and new knowledge to enrich their culture. The massive expansion the IPA style has seen over the last few decades exemplifies this story perfectly. Doodadeladadad expands on this idea a little, playing around with the idea of deus ex machina, which is a narrative device used to get a stories hero out of a seemingly hopeless situation through the last minute revelation of some hitherto unknown power or all-powerful ally turning up at the last minute to save the day. It’s often a sign of lazy writing. Doodadeladadad is a made-up word that we started using when we were renovating our tap room and new brewery site. We kept getting in to situations where we seemed to be out of options to solve some constriction problem only to realise one of the many little off-cuts of wood that were always laying around the place would serve to save the day. Those little bits of wood become known as doodadeladadads and are our very own in house brand of deus ex machina

“That actually quite cool! So other than the names what’s unique about your beer? and Why is it relevant?” 

That’s a really tough question. The temptation is to say that we search out the highest quality ingredients, stay at the forefront of emerging trends, and ensure that the beer we make is of the highest quality we are able to produce whilst simultaneously constantly looking for ways to improve process control and raise the bar for the finished product. In truth I’d expect every brewery in the country to give that response. What’s truly unique about our beer is the vertical integration from style, ingredients, artwork, beer name, and the write-up each beer gets. It was important to us that we tell the various elements of the human story and we do that through archetypes as well as other narrative devices. We co-evolved alongside narrative; It’s how we think. It’s how we frame and comprehend the world. The beer has to be excellent, inventive, fresh, and exciting, but that’s not enough alone. It’s also got to reflect the humanity of the drinker; expand their own understanding of themselves and the world around them. We all need to be able to place ourselves within the grand narrative of the human project, now more than ever.

“A lot of Brewers after a time suffer with Brewers Block, How do you avoid it?” 

We suffer from the exact opposite! We have more ideas for new beers than we can possibly ever make. I would say we have a back log of beers that’ll keep us in new releases for a few years yet and the list is ever growing. Sometimes we have to tamp down some of our more crazy ideas and weed out a few ideas that may wander off into the long grass. Likewise, we’re ambitious people and expanding into new territory is what keeps the job interesting. When that’s the sandbox you play in, the only boundaries are whether something is financially viable at the stage you’re at when you have the idea. If it’s not, it goes on to the ‘Board of Dreams’ and we circle back to it when the opportunity presents itself. If there were a beer that you could brew with no regard to cost or production or sales, what would it be and why? It would definitely be a selection of old ales and barley wines, wild fermented and barrel aged. Maybe adding further steps like icing them to concentrate the flavours and up the abv. This idea has been at the very centre of the ‘Board of Dreams’ for well over a year now. It’s only the huge expense involved in setting up the project that’s prevented us from getting it off the ground already. This is one idea we will be circling back to in the very near future.

“As you said you are both ambitious and like to push the boundaries of brewing, what was your biggest brewing mistake? and was it a true monster that you created?”

Very early on we made a dunkel that tasted like blood. That was awful. Most recently we attempted to make a beer using swamp water. It was truly horrendous. Needless to say, that went down the drain.

“What are a few beers that other brewers are making that make you stop and think?”

The two that spring to mind immediately are the Schneider Weisse Aventinus Eisbock. Everything about that beer makes us stop and think with every mouthful. Its indulgent nature that doesn’t rely on any modern gimmicks; the tradition that’s in every drop.  I visited their taproom in Munich a couple of years back and drinking that beer in its natural environment was a treat beyond words. We were also discussing the new imperial radler that Seven Brothers have just released. Category bending craziness is right up our street and just the words imperial and radler in the same sentence are brain twisting. 

“Should you fulfil your board of dreams in regard to the barley wine or old style ales, do you have any potential names already picked out for them?”
 
The barrel-aged wild & mixed fermentation beer project is going to have an aesthetic and nomenclature all of its own to help it stand out as being unique amongst our other ranges. We have a whole bunch of new naming conventions all lined up to go. Every time we start a new range or subset of beers we play around with all the naming ideas we have and see which sticks. As we use them up, new ideas form and they get added to the list. At the moment we’re playing around with idiomatic narratives, logical fallacies and sensemaking to generate new beer ranges. Who knows what weird ideas we’ll be working on when this project kicks off but they’re definitely not going to be ordinary.

“Given the current trend in breweries to get as close to carbon neutral as possible, what efforts do you make to be environmentally friendly?”

We try and stack up as many little things that are within our grasp as a small, independent business. We buy all our ingredients as locally as we can, trying not to stray outside of Yorkshire wherever possible. The travelling distance on most of our beer output over the last couple of years can be measured in metres rather than miles as we push as much of our beer through our tap room next door as is possible. Moving forwards, we’re starting to work with our local council to investigate resource efficiency and circular economy to try and reduce our environmental impact. That’s all gone on the back burner a little as we try and survive in these rather unusual times but we’re looking forward to picking it up again soon.

“What is your favourite style to brew in?“

My favourite way to brew is to move around styles as often as possible. My nemesis is repetition. Things get stale really quick when you’re trapped brewing endless variations of pales etc. and as much as I love the style and the benefit of repetition is often consistency, the flipside of that can be rapid onset boredom. So moving back and forth amongst the many and various styles is essential. Have I dodged that question!?!

“and finally, what is coming up next for the Meanwood Brewery?“

We’re in the middle of a massive upscaling and upgrade project, increasing our brew length and quality as well as bringing canning inhouse. That’s going to radically change the way we work and hopefully make the business more robust and adaptable in a world where only the most adaptable survive. That means national and international sales, new can releases every week or so, a massive increase in our range and plenty of new staff joining the team. It’s all wildly exciting and totally counter narrative for the times. That makes us either very stupid or very brave. To be fair we’re more than capable of being both at the same time.

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Thank you very much for sitting down and talking me today guys! Once this whole situation has blown over I will definitely be paying your establishment a visit in person!

In the meantime Readers you can check out the Meanwood Brewery website here and their Terminus online Store here . And remember Shop Local!!