Hello my fellow beer lovers,
Today we are going to be having a quick chat with non other than the head honcho Greg Pilley at Stroud Brewery about their methods, recent fund raising , andethos towards beer. Similarly to Toast Ale, Stroud are an exceptionally environmentally friendly brewery, who brew sustainable beer for the masses.
“Good Morning Greg, thank you for taking the time to talk to us today. Can you please tell the readers a little about Stroud Brewery and your philosophy towards beer?”
I have always loved the outdoors and being outside. I ended up graduating with a degree in Marine Biology, paid off the uni debt working on an organic farm and then went on to several years conservation work in Nigeria as a VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas).
On return I worked with the Soil Association, who promote organic food and farming, in their local food team supporting community based food enterprises. With this background I have long been aware of our impact on planet life support systems and recognise that change has to happen at an individual and community level. So at the moment I was possessed to start my own brewery, I already wanted to plant these values into everything we do. We are now the only B Corps brewery dedicated to brewing organic beer – although we dont intend to defend this as out USP as we believe that all breweries and businesses need to embark on the same journey.
“As we all know being green isnt cheap, and I know the Lockdown has hit you hard. My partners in crime and I have already made a donation to your ‘Survival Supporters & Brilliant Beer Backers’ crowdfunding page, can you tell us a little about how this came about and what plans you have for the future should you raise enough money”
Our Crowdfunder was a response to the “Covid Crisis”. Half our turnover of our own large bar and the other half is largely sales to other pubs and bars. With the closure of hospitality we have been down to 30-40% of our usual income yet many of our overheads have remained. We have eked out the cash we have, but really needed to turn things around quickly. The Crowdfunder was an opportunity to offer our beer and services in a “pay forward” arrangement so not taking on any additional liabilities. In just 28 days we raised £114,542.42 exceeding our target of £100K. It has been a great experience. The team at Crowdfunder were really supportive and the platform very easy to use and manage. The response form our fan base was really reassuring, and it has just been great to have a way of engaging with our supporters. we are now looking forward to a busy month fulfilling the hundreds of postal orders, so very uplifting for the team.
Now are we all know you are pretty green already. But what if any further efforts do you intend to take in order to become even more environmentally friendly then you already are?
We have installed our own canning machine. The environmental benefits of cans over bottles are clear to us so we are “canning bottles” and bringing our customers along with a CANpaign over the coming months. We are switching labels from plastic to paper, we are undertaking a carbon footprinting exercise – just to benchmark where we are at, and to help us improve.
We are also on our next round of B Corps certification, and hope to do incrementally better – there is much more we need to do. We dont want to go down the road of offsetting but do our best to not cause the problem through our business practices.
“Thats certainly is some green thinking, and with the results of your fund raising you can see that your product is clearly grabbing the attention of the public, and rightly so… Speaking of grabbing your attention, im interested to learn if there are any storys behind your curously named beers e.g: Nelson, Big Cat, and Lol or is it that you have a specific process when it comes to naming your products?
The motivation for creating and naming beres comes from all angles! And it is of course that creative fun that all breweries thrive on. We celebrate local people, events and characters, we want to showcase organic takes on well known styles of beer, and increasingly we aim to highlight issues around social change. Big Cat is named after the prolific sightings of large Black cats in the Cotswolds – it is our smooth slinky easy drinking stout and has just featured in the Independent
“Given your overall message and philosophy to beer is it likely we could see any collaboration beers in the near future with like-minded breweries such as Toast Ale?”
I believe we have a collaboration with TOAST pencilled in for the autumn.
“That great news, what kind of beer can we expect to see from your collaboration between yourselves and Toast?“
We have not put heads together on this yet just set a date but pretty sure it will include bread! ; )
it will be an organic brew and hope to have some environmental messaging encompassing the themes we will hear debated at COP26
Keeping on the topic of collaborations, If you could have your pick of any brewery to do a collaboration with who would you choose, and why?”
I’d be interested in teaming up with a European partner for an organic brew collaboration. Why do breweries collaborate? – to have fun, to learn new approaches and to shout out. A brewery we have never reached out to but I have always admired is Brouwerij de Molen. They are prolific, diverse and I have always enjoyed the examples I have tried.
This concludes todays interview, thank you again Greg for taking the time out of your busy schedule to speak to us today. Its always good to hear something positive in the brewing world, especially at the moment. I wish you all the best, and I look forward to hopefully seeing you at your Brewery Party (when the power at be allow it). You can check out Stroud Brewerys Shop for their Environmentally and very tastey beers, reviews of which will follow shortly.
The|Eternal|Hoptimitsts 