Hello, my fellow beer lovers,
We are back again, talking to some of the amazing individuals who make the fantastical nectar that we call beer. Given how much my dad and uncle loved doing our last interview with Bricknell Brewery, they were eager to do another, and who am I to deny them a chance to meet some new people and try some new beer on the way.
So I will leave you in their capable hands for this one, take it away Peter.
Late last year, John and I made one of our periodic trips north of the border to watch some Scottish football, sample some of the local pies of course the local beer. This time it was Cowdenbeath, and I noticed that it was short on real ale pubs but there was a nano brewery in the town worth checking out. Arrangements had to be changed last minute due to Covid isolation but on the Saturday lunchtime whilst we were sampling Beath Brewing ‘Bang Shang a Lang’ Pale Ale (ABV 4.5%) in the Woodside Hotel we got the call we were waiting for. Our re-arranged visit to Beath Brewery then took place straight after the match (Cowdenbeath 1 Stirling Albion 0). Not the easiest place to find, we had driven past it three times the day before, but Owner Ian saw us lurking and waived to us from the top of a huge flight of steps up his garden. We then joined him in his brew house which is converted from a double garage.
First we asked what got him into brewing
It was home brewing about 11 or 12 years ago. The first few kits were bad, and I just wanted to know why. Then about the fourth kit, I think it was a stout, came out alright and I just wanted to know why the other ones were rubbish. Then I progressed to whole grain and hops trying to get interesting beers.
In my full-time job, I travel, I was going to London, Leeds and Liverpool and trying some great beers and then coming back to fife which has nothing, it’s an area that hasn’t got much real ale.
I don’t go out much and brewing stops me from drinking, I come out on Saturday and brew all day, it gets me away from my full-time job and the computer. It’s a change, I love brewing and getting covered in malt.
When did you start up as a brewery?
About six years ago sitting in a pub in Leeds I decided I was going for it, but I knew nobody in the business. It was just going to be small, selling to CAMRA festivals so I registered to supply them, and then it grew from there. The plan was just 20L a week and just do it part time. I was drinking it and what I wasn’t drinking I was giving away to friends, family, and work colleagues. Then the Revenue & Customs got in touch and said you’re not allowed give homebrew away as it’s for drinking at home and that they would lose duty, so I had to register with the Revenue & Customs.
I won a few competitions and got Champion Beer at local festivals and once you start picking them up pubs get interested and demand grows. It snowballed from there and now I am producing about 150L a week, it could be a lot more but its hard work when you’re only doing it part time, so 150 to 200L is about the most you can do.
We noticed there was dispensing equipment so we asked if he did outside bars for people
Whatever people want. Outside bars we have all the equipment the plan was to have a pop-up bar once or twice a month but Covid has got in the way.
How often do you change your brews and who do you brew for?
The brews change all the time, just depends on the ingredients and the demand. We brew for the local pub the Woodside Hotel, which is the only pub in Cowdenbeath that sells real ale. We have also brewed for the Commercial Inn in Dunfermline, they had 7.5% Unicorn Invasion of Dundee and said that was probably the fastest selling beer they ever had on cask, sold in less than a day.
We also supply a few local shops with cans on a regular basis and that’s about it. We switched to cans during lockdown and got a canning machine.
Who does the design for the labels on the cans?
That’s me! You learn to do everything yourself; you spend hours looking at cardboard boxes and bags and then you start do artwork and logos, working with the label company going back and forth until the quality is right. A local artist got in touch with us, and she created the graffiti logo for us.
Does the local community in Cowdenbeath support you?
Yeah. We do a lot with Cowdenbeath Football club, we’ve had a few beer gardens in there and we are doing a beer tasting hopefully next Friday (11th December). We did three beers with them last year for Christmas, we brewed a lager that run from Easter to September, and we’ve got another lager and a mango pale ale, the captain’s tipple because his nickname is mango.
During lockdown we got a licence to sell from here for deliveries and collections. Guys come along with their bottles, and we’ve been refilling perfect draught kegs and just about anything else figuring out how to get beer in whatever people bring!
Probably the most popular ones are lager which flies out and we have a NEIPA called Dance Monkey, I can do 150L and gone in a couple of weeks. We’ve done a NEIPA for guys doing a comics and beer blog and that’s real fruity.
You try to keep things local then
Yes! We get all our malt from Crafty Maltsters Anne which is a farm just up the road in Auchtermuchty. Every week when I need a fresh bag, I go down to collect it and drop off the spent grain to a friend’s farm for his cows.
The gas is from near my full-time work in Livingston, the place I go to is quite cheap, so I go across there for 4-5 breweries, and you’ll see empty bottles lying around! They are returned one day a week and I get them filled up.
A lot of the micro-breweries know each other and help each other out there’s a good community out there and even some of the bigger concerns will help out when they are able.
Looking at the pump clips in the Woodside Hotel most of the beers were between 3.8% and 5.5% do you only brew to those strengths?
Those are the strengths for the beers brewed for the pubs. We’ve produced strong beers in casks before and it’s ended up as carnage! Some of the drinkers are committed to drinking their 4 or 5 pints whether its 4% or 8%
Other regular beers are Peach Cobbler is 7.1%, Dance Monkeys which is the most popular one is about 7.5%.
One of the guys came over from the pub and we did the West Coast in the summer. He was made redundant and was kicking around bored, so he asked to come over and brew and we produced it at 7%.
What was the first beer?
The first one we brewed was Are You With Me which was citrusy red ale
Do you brew darker beers, stouts, or porters?
Oh yes, we do from a 4% stout all the way up to imperial stout which is usually 11%. Yeah we just do every style I’d like to have every style in stock here at some point.
Have you thought of expanding and going full-time?
All the time, I can bring someone in or get a bigger unit and pay some people to help but the best part of the job is mashing in and then cleaning the mash tun, so I’d be bringing in someone in to do the bit I love.
I would love to have a unit with a wee taproom attached or have a brew pub on the High Street that kind of idea, I think every village should have its own little brewery and its own little taproom.
We were able to get our hands on three of the beers, the Mango Pale Ale Captains Tipple, the Cowdenbeath FC lager and the Speech Bubble NEIPA which will be reviewed over the coming days. This is another small operation which is more a labour of love, Ian clearly loves the escape that hands on brewing provides from his 9 to 5. We also liked his ethos of trying to source locally and being part of the local community and he said that when he’s on holiday he looks for the local breweries and tries to drink their beers. Its great that smaller regional enterprises are thriving, and local mini brewers are popping up almost everywhere. His idea of a micro-brewery with a taphouse amongst communities is an ideal that I would like to think can be achieved.
The|Eternal|Hoptimitsts 