T|E|H – Meet the Brewers – An interview with Wishbone Brewery

Hello, my fellow beer lovers,

In today’s post, we are going to be talking to Adrian at the Wishbone Brewery in Keighley.

Adrian started out his career by washing casks, and then through toil, and study got himself promoted to ‘Brewhouse team leader’ at Saltaire where he had some of his own recipes become regular additions to ales there. This experience along with creating homebrewed beers on his kitchen stove hob, which found approval among his peers, all fed into the ‘Pipe dream’ that is the Wishbone Brewery, and I for one am pleased that he brought the dream to fruition.

The dream was realized when the Wishbone Brewery was established in 2014, but didn’t start brewing its delicious tipples until mid-2015. Clearly not wanting to back down to a challenge, Adrian chose to set up shop, a stone’s throw away from the well-established Timothy Taylors Brewery in Keighley as well as a couple of other choice hitters in the industry. However, despite the considerable headstart that these other breweries have on Wishbone, I have to admit that in my opinion despite its tender age of 5 years, it’s not a far cry for giving them a run for their money in regards to the quality of their ale. Keep your eyes peeled in the coming week or so as I will be reviewing some of their available tipples which you can purchase from their online store.

Why Brewing? What first drew you to the profession?

You could ask, Why Engineering, Why Graphic Design too, you’ll get the same answer because they were things that interested me. Or I could give a one word answer for the question BEER. 😉

But in all seriousness, I had an interest in the flavours available from Hops and malt through homebrewing and drinking, and wanted to experiment more.

Can you tell us a little about the first beer you brewed and how your process has changed over the last 5 years?

The first beer we brewed was our 3.6% Blonde, every brewery should have a Blonde, the very first brew came out well, we tweaked our procedure to ensure we brewed as efficiently as possible. That said we never buy the cheapest malt as its a false economy as you’ll end up making less beer and it can cause problems with the process. Brewing is mainly about cleaning properly so that is the part that is fully documented with written procedure, we’ve got it nailed down and we have never had an infected beer and we can count the beers on one hand that we have thrown away for other reasons over the last 5 years.

That’s some going, as next to no spoilage in 5 years is no easy feat. Given the number of breweries drastically cutting down their emissions and with Brewdog recently becoming the first carbon-negative beer brand in the world, what further efforts do you go to, to ensure that you are Environmentally friendly?

Small breweries are being environmentally friendly isn’t easy, if you want to do something to benefit the planet then its going to cost you an arm and a leg, so unless you a multinational Brewer like the aforementioned BD you are going to struggle.

That being said, we switched from Plastic Pumpclips to Paper-based Pumpclips as and when we order a new batch we order Paper-based instead of Plastic. We wanted to add equipment to save water, time, money, hops and beer, but the Grant funding for it had too many financial hoops to jump through, so it failed at the last hurdle, even though it was a project the Grant people approved of.

We wanted to put solar panels on our roof but our landlord wanted to charge us Rent for having them there and also wanted all manner of structural surveys etc. We would love to look at recycling more but we produce such small amounts of the different waste streams its not a financially viable project until such a time that society, government and councils make it easier.

Can you tell us how your beer is connected to the local area?

Well we brew in Keighley, we live 10mins down the road and have always lived locally, we want to make Keighley a Beer Town for the benefit of all the town’s breweries and Pubs, Keighley has a lot of history and brilliant architecture that is often overlooked, providing open and accepting beer environments with beers that simply aren’t in Wetherspoons and Supermarkets is a way I believe can improve the area.

What are the biggest problems you have ran into in producing beer?

Right now, Covid, Pubs closed! In all honesty there is a lack of beer being valued across the UK, a substantial minority of Pubs sell beer too cheaply so price is a race to the bottom and this does nothing for the beer market as a whole, supermarkets are another problem when you can buy industrial beer so cheap that it prices Landlords out of the market. We hope this changes in the future so that Landlords have more support and a more fair playingfield.

If there were a beer that you could brew with no regard to cost or production or sales, what would it be and why?

Already brew it, Imperial Stout…. whats not to like 😉  I have some Barrel Ageing experiments in mind that I would like to use Wine Barrels for but the wine barrels cost a load of money so its quite a commitment.

Ah, Black Imp Imperial, I know that one very well, definitely no complaints this end on that one! I must admit I am partial to a good beer name, and Dassler, Pixie Juice, Tiller Pin, and of Course Black Imp Imperial are no exception. If you did create your wine barreled aged beer, what would you call it?

I have no idea for a name at the moment as its currently only a recipe concept in my head, an idea to develop on paper. The name will come way down the line and probably at the last minute.

Names are the hardest part as we try not to use names that are popular elsewhere and we have to check for Trademark conflicts before settling on one (This saves IP Law solicitors breathing down your neck wanting to Take you to court)

I must admit I love a rum cask-aged Porter or Stout, so I would be very interested in trying a beer that has been aged in a wine barrel, what would you say are the further complications of aging beer in barrels?

In one word…. Inexperience… barrel ageing is something we want to do more but you learn by doing and trying things out, obviously we can ask questions of other brewers but at the end of the day you just have to go for it and commit the ingredients, barrels, time and the expense to it.

And finally, what is next for the Wishbone Brewery?

More cans, Hope for the best, hope Covid allows us to keep doing what we love and employing the staff we value. Hopefully build the business so we can afford to pay our staff and ourselves more. The big news is the building in keighley we have bought that we will be turning into a new Pub sometime later this year, though this is subject to Lockdowns and Covid as to when we actually start work on it.

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That concludes our interview for today, thank you eve so much Adrian for taking the time to talk to us today and answer our quizzy questions, If any of you would like to know more about the Wishbone Brewery, or even buy some of their delicious beverages you can do this via their website here