Ep40 - Brewing Efficiency and Growth Management - Mark Gammons - Tiny Rebel

What happens when a brewery grows really fast…but still wants to make world-class beer? 

In this episode, I sit down with Mark Gammons, Head of Operations at Tiny Rebel, to talk about what it actually takes to scale production without sacrificing flavour, brand or quality.

We dive deep into the balance between efficiency and volume, how Mark manages production, expansion and quality and why your brew team might be more important than the brewery itself.

Expect honest reflections, tried-and-tested formulas for managing production and plenty of practical gems as we cover:

⚖️ Scaling up while staying true to your roots
🍻 How Tiny Rebel’s brewhouse has evolved over time
🧪 Why fermentation and yeast management are still an art
🏭 The not-so-glamorous side of infrastructure and planning
👥 Why team culture matters more than stainless steel
🥴 And what happens when something goes slightly...off

Mark’s been through it all! From small batch brews to running a serious production machine. This episode is a playbook in keeping things real while growing big.

📚 Chapters:
00:00 Introduction and Podcast Overview
02:15 Guest Introduction: Mark Gammons
03:45 Discussing Yeast and Fermentation - AEB
05:28 Mark Gammons' Brewing Journey
06:51 Tiny Rebel Brewery's Growth and Expansion
10:33 Balancing Efficiency and Quality in Brewing
13:57 Challenges and Strategies in Brewery Management
15:01 The Importance of Community and Collaboration
19:37 Infrastructure and Design Considerations
23:12 Scaling Up: Utilities and Capacity Planning
30:26 Maintaining Quality Amidst Growth
40:33 Managing Brewing Deviations
41:48 Volume Consistency in Brewing
42:42 Brewhouse Volume Management
45:08 Manual vs. Automated Brewing
53:38 Team Management and Growth
58:42 The Importance of Taste Panels
01:09:47 Expanding Brewery Production
01:15:29 Concluding Thoughts and Farewell

🎧 Proudly sponsored by AEB – the go-to for Bio-Tech solutions in beer. Check out their brewing yeasts and products here https://www.aeb-group.com/uk

📈 Want to see where sustainability is heading? Check out the 2024 Craft Beer Report: brewresourceful.com/craftbrewerysustainability2024

Chris LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-lewington/

Transcript

0:13

Hello everyone, and welcome to the latest episode of the Modern Brewer Podcast with me, your host, Chris Lewington. It's great to be back in the host seat interviewing some of the industry's best and brightest and have them share their knowledge and experiences with me, and it also means you as well. I actually listen to quite a lot of podcasts. I think I listened to probably a lot more before I started this, but you know, more recently I listened to a lot of business orientated stuff and whilst a lot of the guests give away. A lot of really, really good information, like, modern thinking, new approaches. I always find the content's really loaded. IE it is driven towards you booking a course or buying a product or yet another subscription model. And I get it right, it costs time, which is often business time to do these shows. And to be honest, mostly in life, people are quite self orientated, so they're always looking to get into their business or their career to the next level. I. However, I noticed that quite a lot of the guests of this show have absolutely no ulterior motive to be on here other than just trying to help the community of brewers learn from their experiences or their like specialist subject or their niche. I've even had people come on from suppliers who talk about nothing to do with a product whatsoever, Which I find quite fascinating, but also heartwarming. You know, I, I mean, I have no issue whatsoever, people coming on to push or promote. A product or a service or what they do, as long as they still give value. I mean, who really cares? But I do wonder how many industries are really like ours. Like that collaboration is our superpower and I hope we kind of never, ever take that for granted. And the fact that people are come willing to come on and just share their experiences so that people can learn, I think is like really, really cool. a shining example of that is today's guest, mark Gammons. Uh, for me personally, he was one of the UK's most outstanding brewers. He has such a broad, broad range of knowledge and the expertise. To really run such an incredible brewery, both on a production and quality standpoint. And actually when. We discussed this, doing this episode together, we set out to talk about growth and efficiency, as Mark has so much experience in both of those. especially efficiency to me is one of the most impo important topics in brewery production right now. growth might not be. For some, but let me tell you, there are still plenty of brewers growing and the stuff that Mark shares in here is like just a gold mine of information. It is not information that you find in textbooks or online or anywhere else, like the only way you really learn this is from listening to people who have been through it and have the experience and have made those mistakes. And it's really, really fascinating for, for me and I, you know, I wish I had a time machine, so when I was starting out on my journey, I could come back and listen to this episode and go back.'cause I know I would've been able to run a much, much, much better brewery, much quicker. So I'm really excited for for everyone to, to hear it. But before we get into it. But before we get into it, I want to take a moment to talk about yeast fermentation and the science behind making better beer. Today we're diving into a EB, A company that's been pushing brewing innovation for over 60 years. A EB started in wine making but has become a leader in brewing solutions, working with breweries worldwide to enhance your yeast selection better, your fermentations, and increase your process efficiency. Whether it's a crisp lagger, a hazy, new England IPA, or even a non alk, they've got yeast strains and fermentation tools designed to enhance flavor, improve consistency, and reduce brewing costs. That's why brewers like Northern Monk, pigeon Hill Brewing and Nils Oscar Brewery have collaborated with a EB on brewing projects from yeast selection to filtration and stability. Their FOMO brewery range is tackling low and no alcohol beers, bringing in citrus and tropical notes where traditional strains fall flat. And if you're struggling with hazel stability. A B'S clarification and filtration solutions help keep your beer looking and tasting its best without compromising foam retention or aroma from yeast nutrients to process optimization. A EB is bringing science into the brewhouse in ways that make beer better and brewing smarter. Want to learn more? Want to learn more, check out their website in the show notes, or speak to your local a EB rep. Okay, everyone, here we go. Let's get into it. Welcome to the show, mark Gammons. you. Yeah, thank you, mark. Yeah, I know again, like everyone of my guests got a super busy schedule, so I really appreciate you taking the time out, um, to come on the podcast and talk about efficiency and growth in breweries.'cause probably not many breweries in the UK have gone through what you guys have gone through and you personally. So I'm really excited, uh, to hear more about it. But the listeners who might not know who you are, uh, could you give us a little bit about your backstory and your journey with Tiny Sure, of course. Uh, my name's Mark. I've had the great pleasure of working for Tiny Rabbit now for seven years. Um, I've been brewing now for 20 years. I started back as a cast washer in 2005, just trying to, uh, earn beer tokens on the Saturday, uh, with, with another friend of mine. Um, we boasted in the industry that he's in America now. Um, and from that it was a cast brewery called Skinners. And from that I put myself through my IBDs, um, and, you know, had the great opportunity to come up and work with Tony Rabble just after they had their 2015 coach, uh, gold for GBBF. Um, and they were expanding. They put the brewery in, you know, turned it on sort of summer, 2017, few teething issues. And I came up to sort of help navigate that. And then, you know, they've, uh, they've kept me around ever since to, uh, much of their chagrin, I think most of the time. But certainly to my privilege. Yeah. That's awesome. So you joined in 2015. What's, I mean, I dunno if you can share what sort of volumes were you doing then? I think the guys were putting in around about seven to 8,000 hec. 20 15, 20 16, the wind came in and, you know, they had to do a little bit of contracting, certainly on small pack. So I think they came in at around about, I think we were just nudging nine to 10,000 when we kind of came here at 17 20 17. And from there we probably put about 5,000 to. Some year, 10,000, heck on every single year. Um, so sold, sold last few years have been, you know, nudging 50 thousands last four years. Not the same growth that we had through Covid, as I think a lot of the craft industry have seen. But yeah, we're still sort of costing on there. And the plan for us is, is always to still keep growing it and, and see how far we can push it. Yeah. I mean, I've been to the brewery at the moment. It's it, it's awesome. It's really cool. And that tap room is like, for me, it's one of those places you walk in. It feels like the community that a brewery should be. I really love that about it. I hadn't seen anything like that, you know, you know, I came from Cornwall and we, you know, had a few guys coming out there. Ver had only just started and you know, skins had a decent tap rooms and Noel had their sort of visit center, but I hadn't seen that sort of big American style push. And I remember just pulling into your state and sort of driving down here. I'm like, yeah, Wales Industrial State is a brewery. I know what I'm doing. And then you just had this sort of 300 to 400 seat capacity bar with people just, and like moms and kids and grandparents just having breakfast on a Saturday morning at like 10. What planet are these guys on? That is such a risk, but it, it really works certainly through Covid and recently it's just a community hub. We've had kids in today, before I did this, I was talking to a bunch of kids that are just trying to get onto the job market and sort of working with, um, you know, some job sent the trust sort of ideas and launch pads and, you know, I think this afternoon we've now got a couple of other sort of small sort of teaching shops for, for Easter. So it's just, Yeah. That's so cool. I remember when I, I came down, what was it last year, it must have been, maybe last year, I came down and it was, I can't remember what day, maybe Tuesday, Wednesday. And it was busy. Chat room was like busy at lunchtime and I was like, this is, this is what you wanna see. yes. how many bar even bars are like busy at a, on a Tuesday, let alone like a brewery on a, as you said, on an industrial estate. It's really Uh, yeah, we're quite lucky that we've hidden quite a lot of houses around us, so there's got a lot of, lot of churn. I don't think anyone put a pub near 'em for a while, so it's, uh, but it's good. It's not just sort of people that are really into the brand. It's sort of people that are really into sort of the ethos of what we're doing. And we, we, we try and do a lot for the community and, and put things back in is where we can, so it's big part of SG. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think, you know, when I talked on the podcast with Luca, we were talking about kind of longevity in. craft beer game and one of the, one of the key points was community of having like community of people around you, uh, who will support you through those times. I remember speaking to, can't remember his name now, from, um, a brewery in London and they were saying that they only got through Covid because they had a core group of people who used to come all the time, exactly the same sort of clientele, actually like moms and, dads and like, uh, you know, families and people who came and they would support 'em through Covid to come and get the cans off them, just to keep them, them going. They were like, we wouldn't have done it without our community. So it was quite interesting actually. Yeah. You know, I think I, you know, charity starts at home, but love starts at home as well. And, you know, even doing things, you know, we put on a big fireworks display, um, and a festival every year. Uh, rebel Festival is coming again this year. And you know, the idea is to get as many people from the local area supporting it. It's great to see people coming from like Edinburgh. We had guys coming from China to come see us and that's great. Good stories, but what we looking for is just people to, and. Mm. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. let's go, uh, talking about expansion and everything, I'm always curious about this, dynamic of like, so there's kind of the chicken and egg of expansion. Like did you work backwards from demand or sort of build a vision and grow into it? Is like the way that I always try and structure it. So did you, did you sort of build the brewery and then be like, we need to fill the volume, or was the volume there and then you built the brewery? I think with any project, you, you have to openly embrace that there's compromise somewhere. And you know, you can go after the ideal version of anything, but there's gonna have to be a compromise somewhere.'cause money's not infinite and space isn't infinite. And equally, you know, sales is, is is a very dark art and a very difficult game. Particularly growing beer sales for brands. You know, you're competing against guys that are very established and can have quite level playing field and even they don't get it right. So if you're looking for demand capacity to sort of capital expenditure, it's really difficult. We, the philosophy I'd overall engage in is look at, look at your system and set before you like looking at efficiencies and look at what your best practice practices and work your capacity model from there. Um, you know, where are your pinch points working hectare as an hour if you want input or output. It doesn't really matter to the brewery, I don't think. I always talk output if you wanna talk to sales because they just won't understand. But, and you know, there's always gonna be flies and ointments, but it's, it's looking about that. And you wanna run a brewery like you run a car. You wanna run a car at 50, 60 miles an hour, you can drive a car at a hundred. You shouldn't, but you can. You can drive a brewery at a hundred miles an hour. And it's only really when you're taking that, you know, if you're talking miles an hour, you're talking to that 80%, 80, 90 mile per hour, and you're consistently in there. That's really where you wanna start looking about how to expand and put into things. Obviously, you've got some root causes. Infrastructure's always difficult if you, if you're not gonna get, you know, if you, if you, well, I'm about 5.5 to one liters per water. So if I'm not gonna get five times more water in, then I'm gonna sell. I'm gonna, I've got a big problem. Same with electricity, same with demand, same with air, same with gases. Everything else in there, your drainage is a huge issue. I mean, again, somewhere. And those really are rate limiting steps. Um, so when you're building a brewery at that level and looking to do that, that's where you can grow into. And it's the same probably for a brew kit. You know, brewery brew kits can change, but they are the most expensive bits. Um, and you can thrash'em at the end of the day. So, Yeah. can keep turning that thing on. You can run a brewery for 24 hours a day if you want to, but until you've got a position where you wanna start putting that to your people plan and consistently be in there, you don't wanna engage in that. Or if it's against your philosophy, don't do it. Tanks are pretty cheap and pretty easy in the grand scheme of things, as long as you've got space. So look at that as an infrastructure. If you wanna do that, then you're gonna have to be hungry for some space and you have to be hungry for some shit capacity. So put that in. Hmm. That would be, that would be certainly the bits and pieces I've made mistakes with at. I just keep putting tanks on the side and not really think about the other bits of infrastructure. I think that would be, uh, sort of the chicken and egg thing again, sales will always come in with a demand model, whether they're growing cask this month or keg next month. Um, and it's just spotting their trend. It's keeping them accountable and just saying, look, you know, we can do a couple more cask. Of course we can. But if you're gonna consistently go, you know, if I'm comfortable with 10 tasks a week and you can consistently gimme 15, I'll look at putting some money into it. But if you're gonna gimme 15 in June and eight in July, we'll just figure it out. Yeah. it's really good. So do you think for breweries should always be, I mean, I guess they often do now, but it, a lot of that growth is coming from sales. Do you think that's where the demand come and then you plan around it? Do you think that's a smart way of doing it? I think it's it, as you say, it's always that chicken and egg thing. Um, I've been in a position several times where sort of sales have outs the brewery and. Hmm. Um, it's not happened recently in a while, but, you know, the, the plan is for that to happen and I, I'm looking forward to, they're looking very smugly at me at the moment knowing that they're gonna do it. I'm sure by September I'm gonna be in the same position, so that's the drawing board. But yeah, it's, it's, it, I think it has to be led at the end of the day. We can make all the beer in the world, but unless someone's gonna sell it and buy it, and it's gonna get into people's hands in the right way, then marketing sales have gotta come up with some really true crystal crystal ideas and be accountable for that. And they've gotta realize your pinch points, you know, ultimately, if you're telling them that I'm not gonna be able to achieve that, and they've oversold, they're the ones that are gonna have to pick up those hard conversations Yeah. at the end of the day, unless you've got answers in there. So it's, it just keeping everyone, you know, as with all teams, it's keeping it open and fluid. Mm. So you moved into this, they moved into this site in 2015. The same one you're in 2017. Oh yeah, 2017. So they wanted, in GPBF in 20 15, 20 17, they sort of, they, you know, the expansion was there. Definitely the demand was there for Koch. Um, and they built this place as a cast brewery. You know, with Vince Johnson, um, and sort of d very different time lags in tanks, very different flows in throughputs, very different expansions. And, and, and certainly the, the raw material infrastructure wasn't, wasn't there to grow to the point you can do, but we, we've got quite a bit of space. So yeah, that was designed to come in, you know, probably at roundabout 60, 70,000 hectares of, of cask. I think it was rated differently at the time, but, um, uh, yeah, that's certainly all I can work out for. So Yeah, that's, that's a lot of ca beer. a lot of cask guess. That changed a lot. that's, yeah, that was, yeah. So, and again, you know, that's the compromise, isn't it? We we're going after cask beer, that's the crystallized marketing solution, you know, and. Gaz, my boss and, and Brad, uh, my other boss, you know, they started build on that concept and deliver to it. And then obviously as we start to move into things that are a bit more craft led, hazy, dry, hoppy, you know, all these things, uh, it, it changes, throughput changes that hectare power, and it's looking about the decisions you make in there. So, as much as you've got decisions to make in, in, in your tanks and your infrastructure and what you're doing, decisions on what beer does when is really important. And it's, it's making sure that you've got the teams empowered and, and thinking about that decision making process as a time constraint. Brewers always want to think about extracts and quality, and sellers always do as well, and that's absolutely fair, but they've gotta realize that they've held to a time accountability for it. Beer is natural. It will do something different once every so often. But you know, if you're doing that five in every 20 brews or you're doing that one in every a hundred brews, there's are two different ideas to your throughput in your capacity. Mm, yeah. Did you, uh, did you have to work on that tank residency time? Because effectively, right, if your demand goes up, you've only got X tanks. Sometimes that's becomes a really important metric, right? Exactly. And it's, it's, it's, you know, it's figuring out your best in class. Look at where everything's gone and go, look, I expect my primary fermentation to be done in five days. I expect my, you know, yeast cropping and, and sedimentation to be done in another two days. I expect my dry hopping to be done in five days and I expect to be called in another two. So I've got 14 days there to very confidently extract what I need to in that process. Now something's gonna go to 16, some of 'em are gonna go to 13. So, but it's making sure you've got to consistently chip away at that. Um, you know, the other side of that, when you're running something that's quite fluid and large is obviously, you know, you've got two weeks there that's a week extra planning and a week qa. It's four weeks to stop the boat. So, you know, if you're seeing an iceberg come up and sales haven't quite met their targets, they're overselling. It's a very slow turn to do that. mm. I think production planning, you know, uh, a, a good friend of of mine that now ael, Matt Heney, uh, wants for a likened, uh, production management from quality management to grabbing a tiger and holding on tight. Um, and I think that's, that's quite a fair analogy. It's always stuck with it, but it's, it's, you know, it, it is a very fluid thing and you've got to learn to sort of grow that and keep it going. So again, if you're looking at that, keep that thro to a nice, comfortable space so that you have the ability to pick up that capacity or put some breaks on if you need to. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. Really good advice actually. And seeing that iceberg coming because it's, at the end of the day, it's, you know, if that happened, it's, you have, it's your responsibility or accountability for the quality, so you have to look after it. And if you've got beer satin tank for three months because you've overdone, it's how can you, you know, how can you win? That's you fighting a losing It is not gonna happen. And again, if you're looking at, you know, something like a V graph and how to map exactly how a brewery's going in and out of here, you've got your injuries, but you want your brew kit to be quite flexible and you want your packaging lines to be quite flexible so that you can keep that consistent tank residency your timeframe as full as you need it to, as capacity as you need to. So you can turn that on and go, right, we'll go up and go, you know, six brews a day rather than four guys do that for a couple of days. I've got my tanks back up and equally pack out. It's coming a bit quicker. You expect those lines to be running very, very quickly. So I'd always expect packaging to be able to do, you know, the fastest he fleet per hour as opposed to the brew kit, which would probably be the great limiting factor. And then Mm don't worry about the tank. Farm is just capacity. Then, you know, transfers or anything else you put in filtration, stabilization that needs to be very, very quick. mm Yeah. Absolutely. So what do you, um, what would you say if you had to do this whole thing again? All of this growth and expansion, 'cause it's per percentage wise was pretty substantial every year. like what, what would you do differently if you had to go through the whole thing again tomorrow? I. Yeah, I saw that question come up and I thought about that and, uh, go make nails was an answer. But I think it change, right? You could have been the same for thousands of years. It's just a, an but, um, again, it has to come into some things like infrastructure pipe work is probably my biggest concern right now. I wish I'd moved to two inch pipe work years ago. I'm now an inch and a half and there is a bit, you know, inch, I've got two inches in some areas. I'm slowly upgrading it out, but at the end of the day, there's a flow capacity in there. This turbine is gonna break out. It's a quality issue. Everything's a bit more manipulated in there. So it's, it's, it's those easy quick wings. Like, you know, you don't have to buy a chiller that's very expensive, but I would design a system that you could then plug other sections into chiller to chill capacity too. You can put other sections of steel pipe work in for, for where you want your, you know, your boiling capacity to be. It's run for the run primarily for your kettles, but if you're gonna need other bits to turn into steam generators, you wanna be able to swap those things in very, very carefully. Um, so I'd over capacity, i'd over capacity pipe work, if you gave me a, a new wave of the wand, I'd put some really nice flow boards in there and, uh, and just have everything sort of tidied up. Yeah. Nice. And you would've done that at what stage in the design stage or? I should have, I should have done that. It has to be on design a hundred percent. It has to be on design. And if you, you know, even to the fact that our tanks are, were originally off the peg and designed by the guy that designed the brewery to begin with, but, you know, all of the main racking ports are sort of, you know, waist high and below. So your cones are on the ground. You know, we've got people bending, we've got table tape. If we'd have taken that up a couple of foot and I'd put decent pipe runs underneath them, I'd have been much more plug and play than I would've been, mm. would've been that. I know that's part probably a particularly unique problem, but it's certainly something I have seen in a lot of other breweries that, you know, you've got that thing there and it's sat and then, you know, you go around most sort of breweries at any pace and you've got, you know, flexi host, snake City just going everywhere and you know, you are losing efficiency, you're losing time, you're creating a health and safety hazard, and you've just not able to do that. At the end of the day, if you've designed that infrastructure, you've got the drainage and you've got your pipe runs and you've got your throughputs right, you can whack out a hundred HEC from enter, put 200 HEC from enter in there, and all of a sudden you've got, you've got some magic happening and you know, those costs are very different to having to redo all the infrastructure. Yeah. Especially pipe work.'cause it's just, it's kind of, once it's in there, it's, it's there. That's it. You know? not particularly editable. No, and Yeah. I think. you sort of turn around one day, go and check your seller sometime and see what pipe work they're using to get themselves outta a, and you know, by all means, people are gonna work the line. They can do, but that does a lot of, Yeah. Yeah. And, and you know, I, the design phase is arguably one of the most important phases because it really sets you up for the rest of your life. And you, difficult 'cause you can overdo it as well, you know, putting too many things in, concerned about everything, but it's. Once it's you, like you have a lot of leeway and a lot of flexibility when you're designing a brewery, and then as soon as it's in that flexibility becomes almost totally inflexible and you, and you are then accountable for the next five to 10 years for that design. It's so important. and the costs are hundred percent in that regeneration. So again, if you looking to skimp a put. And if I've got to, if I've got a brewery, then they're saying it'll be 20,000. If you're looking into design and saying, look, you're doing 10,000 HEC this year and in five years time you'll do 50. Don't buy those cementers. Don't buy. Don't buy at that chilling capacity. Don't even buy that boiler if you don't wanna put areas where you can slot those expensive bits in, make sure you've got the right gas and energy system that can deal with it. But if not, then you've just got a blank off cap that sits there ready to go, and you've got the space. And really look at fluid movement. Is is I. Yeah. Yeah. Fluid movement. That's a really, really, really good way of putting it. What, what are your thoughts on sort of utilities when you are designing and, and scaling up? Do you think you should buy you, you know, sort of compressors and refrigeration plants for your max capacity in the future? Or how would you, how would you recommend people do Absolutely not. Um, and I think, you know, if you're going, if you're going, if you're going to your engineering route and you as a brewer, we'll talk with brewers rather than engineers. But as, as a brewer, you've gotta realize that an engineer's gonna give you a great solid answer. And most engineers, unless they're really, you know, some of the great brewing services guys out there that are brewing focused, will it be used to sort of other, other bits than brew breweries? You will work them hard, but you can always work them over. What they're saying is they're rated, rated a lot, particularly for those peaks and spikes. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't put more services in there and utilities than then again, you are comfortably at that eight 50, 60%.'cause at the end of the day, if you look something chilling, we'll talk about, it seems to be the thing on the mine today. But, you know, if, if, if looking at chilling, if I rated my tank farm, I'd. My tank farm, my chiller is 264 kilowatts and is delivering everything I need it to. I know at some point it's not going to, but the difference for that is, you know, it's a hot summer comes in and all of a sudden it's gonna take me another couple of hours to chill a beer down. I can map that with Tank Farm. I can map that. The throughput, I'm making hazy beers most of the time. It's not such a big pinch point for me for that month or so in comparison to having to run, you know, double the kilowatt chiller, the energy usage, the amount your input's going into it, the amount you'll be losing in that glycol, the amount of prime refrigerant it's going to take. You know, you want to be careful. I'd suggest, you know, look at doing something. I think if you go back to a car analogy, you know, buy something that's gonna do the miles, buy a motorway cruiser, something that's gonna gonna put you out there. If you buy some city racing car it, it needs to be. Yeah, I've, I've heard you mention that number a couple times. Mark that 80%, you reckon that's the, the sort of sweet spot in brewery management where if you can run everything around that, then you've got that extra capacity, but you're also optimally utilizing It certainly is for, it certainly is for this brewery, and, and certainly my experience leads to that. And certainly I think information that when I've, I've been fortunate enough to have access to some, some really, really great old guard, um, that are around. And that's, you know, I think in, in the days that's what their board report was, 80% was a hundred percent. And, and, and you just keep that 20% yourself and in, you know, even fermentation capacity. You're designing 20% for Headspace, aren't you? So 80% is, is for me, it's just everything ticks away quite nicely. You're nice and easily running, you know, you don't have to really work those things all the way. And equally, if you do have in packaging everything else, a breakdown delay, you've got a bit of redundancy to speed. Yeah, that's really good. That's actually, it's nice to have some numbers sometimes, uh, put some numbers to things so people have something to aim at and they, you know, they could work it out. How, how, it's a great, probably a nice question. How, how do you work out for people who might not, you know, who listen to this going, I'd love to know what my percentage is. How would you recommend they would do it? A again, I think you've gotta, you've gotta bring that down to your base decision making in terms of timeframe and recipe. I, I personally separate brewhouse, so work, work, manufacturing is how I think about it. But brewhouse brewing is that side seller is one side, transfer is another side, and then pack out is, is is always innately done in heta liters per hour or units per hour. And, and it's very fable from whether you are purchasing and you can just look at, you know, every single one of your decision makers. I'm sure there isn't a brewery out there that if they're brewing more core beers, that brewing team's gonna be a lot quicker than it is with one-off specials or brand news. If you're putting, um, I hope that sewer experience, it certainly is mine. Um, so you wanna be planning that around them. So you're brewing shift pattern. We run eight hours, I expect my brews to be done in seven. There we go, 80%. All of a sudden you can do it any way you want to. If you know that you can thrash a mash ton by putting a bit more grain into it. Up and up and up and up, work out where the intolerable bits into it and then come back down just so it works and it's easy. But for me, always in this decision makings in timeframe. In, in, in where this goes in there, how long you're boiling for, how long you're running off for, how long your, so oil pooling for, how long your, your hops are on, how long your yeast is on, work that out as a solid timeframe mass and figure out the best you could be. And then take a little bit off that just so that that would be the easy, easy logic for me. I know that and have managed to get beers through in, in 12 days, um, without really compromising the quality. But the more that we do those decisions, I know that it's gonna be risk in there. I know that it's gonna be taxing and I wanna make sure that, I'm making sure these decisions are quite, quite well done at 14 or so, 14, 16. mm. And once you've got that to figure out how much literage you're doing, or hex literage you're doing, divided by the amount of hours you wanna work and you, you're there, it's an hour. That's so good. Yeah. That's so good, man. That's a, it's really good and I think there'll be a lot of people will be really interested to work that out. Um, it's just as you said, like it's just, a good metric to see how the brewery is performing Yeah, on a, like that's, that's a business level really, isn't it? Rather, and a production level. it, it really is. And you know, putting people in that process is probably the more important thing. You know, at the end of the day, your team is the one making that bit. I want my brewers to feel comfortable and engaged within certain reasons. You know, they've gotta do the shifts and they've gotta do the job, but they've gotta be making the best decisions. They've gotta be engaged in that. I want my seller team to make exactly the right decisions. I want my packing team to make sure that they don't feel that, you know, this is omnipresent mass. They're never gonna get through that. They're comfortable with that workflow. So you've got the people engagement side of, it's huge for making that work. You can do it privately on your own, and you'll always come back with a much higher number. Working from a spreadsheet, but you know, let the people control that I think is is the other answer to it. Um, show them where they can probably get to best in class work with them. And I think the big thing for that is engaging in some metrics. Five s is really important. I think five s is a really important metric for, for production management. I know it's, it's used sort of, you know, as a lean manufacturing process or basically glorified tidying up by some people. But if you apply something like a five S methodology to every one of those decisions, how do I sort it out? How do I sustain it? How do I shine it? How do I get it the best it needs to be? How do the team own that process and let them work that? And then, you know, you can run some datas at the end of the month and go, look, I think that could have been a little bit better there. What do you think? If they're coming back to you telling you that that's the best they've ever been, you're probably not engaged'em in the right way. But you know, it's just a case of letting those things cogitate, let's say. Mm. Glorify tidying up. That's not gonna lie. That's exactly what I remember. Fives being, I was, when he said that, I was like, yeah, I remember Yeah, I remember that There's a lot of people out there that will, that will, that will be angry. the control Yes. remember. And that's the thing, isn't it? People do it. And you see the amount of people as you walk in there, particularly relatively corporate ones, and they've got a five s board and they've got it stuck up there. They've probably got a couple of champions that really champion it. And I'm like, well, is it really paying off for you if you're fully automated? Um, but it's paying off for me by guys just going, look, actually, you know, the, the way we make this decision, the way we get these extracts up, the way we get these throughputs going, the way that we get these things up here, it's, it's working well. Love that. Do you, um, we're gonna talk about this 'cause it's a, think it's a really strong narrative or like, um, I dunno, what do I want to use the word here? I think I would say yeah, a strong narrative that I always hear that. Scale brings savings to a brewery. Do you think that's, does that match your reality? Does, is that what you've experienced? I, I think you break it out again and think about scale on input and output level. If I run a brew house three times or one times a day, my gas, my electric, my water are all gonna be less by the third time per liter produced. Of course they are, but my recipe inputs are gonna be the same. My cost of goods, my cost of goods model is gonna be the same. The thing that comes with growth that I'm sure a lot of people experiencing are things like MQs and supplier working minimum water quantities for suppliers. You know, I know cans are, and there's, you know, non and Coast House are doing wonderful work. Um. You know, trying to make that accessible to smaller guys. But you know, with growth, what we found is that we can really sort of hold some suppliers to account, sort of deliver, you know, consistently in those numbers and start to get those costs down. But at the same time, emitter Oil company will go up with that. And, you know, I don't think there's a brewery at a relative size or pace that hasn't had a big problem with things like cans, like boxes, like wastage. That's it. And I think what growth does in that way is if, if I'm running consistent brands, it makes everything more efficient. It makes decision making on the floor a lot more fluid, a lot more comfortable. Um, you know, and you get to be able to really dial in your processes on different volumes and hops and, and, and filtration sets and, and all the bits and pieces and transfer lines.'cause you're running, you know, a couple of bands that are really, really good. And you notice that all of a sudden when you then go back onto a non-core or special and it just sort of goes the window. So I think I, you know, certainly there are. There's, there's, there's, there's productions in manufacture. But I think, you know, the payoff really comes from just looking at that co that cost pound liter. Again, I'll say when your Cox model, my recipe cost is that, you know, you wanna be making sure that that's consistent. The deviation isn't in there. You're making exactly the right amount every single time for your, for your set recipe calculations. And then you can start to really drive those efficiencies with your supply chain. Um, and Yeah. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's interesting because don't always necessarily think that growth in the long term, yes, it will bring you savings, but I think often in the short term, it brings you probably a bit more cost than people anticipate. Um, especially if that growth demand comes quite rapidly, you, because you working, you know, or take that 80%, but then people start working a hundred percent in order to get that additional volume, which means things just naturally aren't being done in the same way. Um, and, you know, losses start to go up. So that cost per hectare that you just talked about, cost per liter goes yeah. Even though you're producing more, but the business goal is to produce more. I mean, I've, you know, I've been in that situation where the business goal was volume. Volume and volume, Yeah, and how you got there was kind of like just do it. it. Just do it. Like, and when you take that 80%, it's a really good mark because then you're working a hundred percent and like, you know, all of a sudden, you know, efficiencies and optimization. Exactly. Just, they fall completely at the wayside of just like getting, can we get another brewing? Can we do five brews, six brews a day instead of four? Like, how does that work? Can we work Saturdays? And like, you know, so difficult. is. yes, we made more beer, but the cost of that hectare was definitely higher than it was before. We were just making more of it. It's so dangerous. Yeah. I think it's dangerous for two reasons. Number one, you're gonna need more people. And I never, I think I hiring should be treated very, very carefully.'cause if we're putting someone in the club, we want 'em to be with us. We want 'em to be trained. We want 'em to be part of our story for a long time or as long as they can be. And, and it's really difficult then when you sort of over hire and suddenly wage budgets get very fraught. People get, and you're not delivering that if you've got, you know, every growth pattern looks like that. And I'd rather, I'd rather, I'd rather be at the end of the year with a few less people that I'm able to sort of, you know, to pay, to train, to get'em engaged, to sort of put some really good packages back to them rather than keep a really high flatter of people as I have done in the past. And, and not, and not be able to, and not have any money left over on wage budget. And that's the biggest cost. And I think the other side of that is, if you talk get, you're in those rooms and you're talking about volume all the time. You make different decisions on quality. Yeah. And you know, the most dangerous decision you can make is not to have someone that's willing to tell you no in your plant.'cause they know that you are pissed off and you've got the, everyone's breathing down your neck and you've gotta get volume out there. And they're just like, oh, I know Mark. I want me to make this decision now 'cause he just wants timeframe. And, and you know, that's the wrong decision. I don't, you know, I want the beer to be the best it can be and I'd rather go back and have the fight with, with, with sales about keeping that because then you're not doing your job. And I've definitely made that mistake in the past, particularly towards the end of Covid where, you know, everyone was just, you know, you're in that firefight and everyone was really behind it and, you know, we needed to sort of just take a step back and go, what is the best for these products? What's best for this beer right now? And, and the best of that beer is the best for the people. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know, that's a really, really fascinating comment you made is that you always need someone, especially when you are, I guess, when your, your position, because that weight of production volume lands quite heavily on your shoulders and then it go, then you are like casting it down. So you need someone to be like, well, no, that beer is not actually ready. It's not good. And you go, okay. Yeah. Because otherwise you get, it kind of turns to this path of least resistance, even though it's not saying that all the time. But, you know, there's definitely decisions I've made previously where I've been like, oh yeah, I mean, ultimately I, that needs to It will be, And someone goes, you can't. it'll be fine. Can't, you go and can't that conversation. you're like, yep, yep, fine. I, I will bite that bullet. And it's just gonna, you know, it is. I get it. But that's really cool. That's a really nice thing to have. Is that someone in the, in the team who's just like, And it's, it's, it's the people, when you're looking at those hour capacity, I was talking about earlier, making those decisions. It's those people that are on the floor making that decision that are just like, look, it may look like that one cheap, but that doesn't feel right, that needs another day. And you like and gotta go, okay, let's, let's give it another data. Let's, let's, let's, Yeah. figure it out.'cause you know, they're, they're, they're right. And having and empowering that sometimes is really difficult. And, you know, I know that I've made that mistake by just sort of like being a blind funk and just trying to get through things and you know, having to sort of like really empower people to be like, hang on a minute, I'm pushing back on you now. You know, thinking about this, it's, it's worth looking at. It really is. Yeah. But then on the other side, there's also times where the business is just, it's in such need of certain things and you have to make that call, you know? That's kinda the fun of it, I guess. that is. And you know, I think I'm, I'm sure everyone's made that call at some point, um, to do that and yeah, to get yourself through a tight spot. Make that call, make sure sales have got it. But, you know, don't, don't consistently make beer for cost. Don't make beer for volume. Make beer for. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Otherwise, that's. We're not really doing what we originally set out to do. Right. That's there. So the constant challenge isn't it, is like you, you wanna be quality focused and often are, but then at the end of the day you are also a business. And it's like, know, especially now as the market's changed a lot and you know, people are having to look at margins, people are having to be a bit more competitive in terms of like on a business level, you know, 20 16, 20 15, you still say you could put anything out there and it would sell. And you know, if there was always like, yeah that, that sort of, I dunno how to put it, but like, I wouldn't say quality focus, but there was a lack of like kind of core business principles. For some people it's sometimes, whereas now it's just not like that, the market has changed and you have to be a bit more as a business. It's really fascinating to see how craft is like kind of having to turn itself a little bit. I mean, you know, we it, you know, whether you wanna call it craft or this new wave sort of thing, you know, it started as a point of difference from what the big, big guys were doing, which was about volume. It wasn't about it, you know, they pretend it's consumer led. Really, it's just about getting it into the pubs and getting it on there and, and, you know, consistently making this. But no one was really making beer for beer's sake. They were doing it for, for, for, for that bubble. And all of the reaction to that from sort of the late nineties, early thousands when, you know, I was lucky involved as well, Chris. You know, that was the antithesis of it. And it's good to bring that whack and go right there, says, and now we're in an area where you've gonna have the beer. Seems still vibrant, but it's tough. It's always been tough. And you've got some, you know, some, some, some various sized plants doing phenomenally good beers. And they're gonna have to come across these challenges as you go. But the point of difference from, from us, from someone that is big, it is, you know, you know a multinational, you huge, huge entity is that, you know, the beer has to be vibrant. And that's why your consumers buy into that. And it's not about brand, it's about what that delivers, you know? And brand has to deliver, the beer has to deliver. At the end of the day, you've really gotta make sure that you're doing that. And I think, you know, I used to run quite a few exercises a couple years ago and I'm mainly remembering 'em now. I should bring 'em back. But you go and get a couple of beers and you talk about what they were like a few years ago with your teams and you possibly talk about your beers, what they were like a few years ago as well. And you like, look, that's where you shape it. You know, it's, it's gotta deliver. So yeah. Yeah, really interesting. So how do you balance efficiency with quality? Because you made a really good point, like the kind of where I always see that brew kind of was born from is that sort of counterculture to beer as a commodity. And you know, then I said we kind of went so quality focused that a lot of the time we lost sight of efficiency and you could produce things for whatever price you wanted because it was always gonna sell. Now that's changed. So how do you manage the, balance between efficiently making, know, tiny rebel, but also maintaining the quality? It's, it's, it's, again, it's about what's achievable and deliverable. I think, you know, if you are making, you know, a couple of batches, you know, a, a, a week maybe, um, your consistency is gonna be much worse than it is if you're making batches at a much higher level, 20, 25, 30 batches a week. However, your feedback might be different from the market at the time. You might be getting a lot of people going, oh, you were doing this. It was really good and vibrant. That's a smaller bubble of people than you'd expect. You really want people not to be telling you how, how good or bad your beer is. You want people to just be, like I said, that's exactly where it needs to be every single time. And so the, the, the answer to that is, is really working on deviations. For me, it's, you know, great, if we're gonna turn that up, let's go for it. But you've gotta be producing that right volume within a heck or so, you know, so that's about where my tolerances is, particularly on the brewing side, packaging half or so. But just making sure it's absolutely plumbed down the line. And what that does is, is it, it gets you where you need to be in terms of specification from, from, from, from salts on the in feed, right the way through to dry hop, to yeast pitching to all these things that you expect to come into your volumes and timeframe, maturation, carbs, everything. As well as then the cost of cans and cost of goods at the end of your cogs. You've just got a real nice. Easy cost of goods manufacture that is a quality product.'cause it's gonna be less deviated if you're doing, you know, and we have done, you know, hundreds of different MPDs a year, you are not getting the time to play with that. And you know, I think the quality is always worse on those beers. You can make one thing taste really good once, but, but by the time you put that in two, three times, that beer's gonna have gone all over the shop. And you want to make sure that you are looking at that process, I think and just going, right, it was up, it's down. Where's it gone? You know, what can we learn from that? What can we do with that? Apply five this again, sort it, sustain it, make it viable, make, see where the decision making process was and go, that's where we go with it. Hmm. So you are managing a lot on the volume, on volumes, because that's what you're saying is the variable for kind of everything. If you keep that consistent, Yeah, as you said that the salt's going in, the hops going in, they all stay the same or within that tolerance. just, just keep that, keep that volume as as tight as you can do really, That's really interesting. I don't think I've ever done that, so that's actually really interesting. I, I, I really like, I only be, but I'm thinking about it now, thinking it makes so much sense. It, it, it's your biggest variable and you can always get hung up. You can get, always get hung up with specification generation and whether you wanna run sigma, all the other bits and pieces. But you know, if you are, if you are putting, if you're putting in, you know exactly this level of mold and you're putting in this level of water and this many soil, your mash pH should be nine times out, 10 within 0.1 pH, Yeah. and you're gonna get exactly what you need. Now, don't get me wrong, a days later you probably gonna have bit a different batch. But look at the batch overall and just plum. Yeah. Yeah. And so what would you say, you mentioned malt or is a good one. What would that, what's the sort of key contributor to the volumes that you would look at, let's say in the Brew House for now? Just keep it simple. I mean, brewhouse volumes again, you know, I think it's plant against infeed and it's keeping those things, you know, really, really vital. I went on a bit of a rampage a few years ago on our malt specs with a couple of our mortars, um, who were great guys and, you know, very knowledgeable brewers and, and it's always great to pick their brains, but, you know, we were looking to get, you know, it as pal malt as I could do, and I accepted a high level of moisture to do that. Now, uh, also gonna have a CO2 impact to that. But what that meant was I was accepting quite a high level of moisture that was a little bit all over the place, and my extracts weren't going into that. So if we tighten that speck up a little bit with my mortar, um, and I start looking at things particularly like crush and particularly like consistently for grain sizing throughout the year, and I just make sure that I've got all of those sort of systems running quite happily in the background and everyone's monitoring them and we're, we're logging them and we're, we're running some deviation curves on them. We know we're gonna get quite a consistent amount in there. Um, as you know, Chris, I've, I've maxed my mash tons as much as I humanly can do. Um, but that does mean I'm brewing less times a year and you know, if the consistent run for that wasn't just going, oh, we get five extra HEC for this one, but that one here and just keep turning it up and turning it up. The way that I approach it, however, is not that calculator based. We know what the mash plan does. We know what the brew does, we know what the adjuncts do. We know roughly what our kilos sort of are. So those first couple of NPD brews, if you are doing a core brand or just doing one or twos, you wanna be getting as much as you tolerably can do out of that. But start looking about how that behaves and just slowly make the decision to incrementally bring that up and bring that up. Um, if anyone wants to go on a cost benefit exercise, see what it's like to max it out and see what the beer quality is downstream. I, I've, I've definitely seen issues from ourselves when we've put too much pressure through those tons and I've lost things like head retention. I've lost things like viscosity and the beer's called neck. There's a benefit in that. It's a mistake and everyone gets a little bit, you know, it does. You are gonna have to deal with that with sales and Market for Pacific makes it that far. One of them did for me. Um, but we know exactly how far that thing goes. Now we know exactly how much we can do with this. So that's the funds put to bed. We're not gonna be able to do much more with them except for running some systems in there. Start looking at coppers. Can you move Whirlpool points? Can you run these things down? Can you adjust these things out? Can you look at how much trouble you're separating? How much work you need to do? It's all, yeah, all played with. I think Yeah. All to be played with. Um, you actually, you mentioned that Tiny Rebel's quite a manual brewery. Is that fair to say? it is a very manual. Yeah. Uh, it was a loaded, I mean, I already, it was a, what's the, already, I've been, but have you ever thought about investing in sort of automation or tech into maybe getting. Consistency.'cause it is quite, I mean, I've worked in both sides and I know the challenge of, of ultimately making humans consistent Is, from brew to brew, from batch to batch. Like there is a natural variance. Of course there is, some people really, really do things in a way that make it so good and some people do things in a different way. And then you're trying to get everyone into the SOPs. But, you know, everyone's a human, everyone's a brewer. So everyone has a a thousand opinions like we all do. So it's how do you, well actually maybe first level of the question, how do you ensure that that sort of consistency that you are getting with your team? And then second part would be, have you thought about tech and and automation and what are your thoughts on that? I think it's embrace it. You know, embrace, embrace people's differences and, and challenges. Ultimately. You know, I I, I'd expect anyone coming in with a different idea, a hundred percent. I do have to take a bit of time to explain why I've done that idea sort of four or five years ago, and we've sort of put that onto to bed. Or if it's a brand new thing, let's, let's go at it and have a little bit of a play and, and have a bit of a tin around. But you just have to accept that, you know, people aren't gonna make different decisions every single time. And it's, it's holding them to a little bit of accountable and just going, look, you know, you were here now, you're here, everything okay? And, and, and you have to embrace that. You, you have to accept it'cause you know it, whether it's a mistake or someone's drifted or just some, some, a different decision was made at a different time. That's gonna happen. But, you know, in putting that system in place for all, there are ones and twos out of 30 forties, that's, that's fine. That's par for the course, you know, and equally, if you're brewing, you know, multiple times to fill tanks, you can guide that a little bit more. One single mistake and one brew becomes one mistake and four brews and it's much less of an impact overall. Um, so I think, you know, again, people try embracing, it's really important, but with the grasp to automation, yes, looked at it. Um, but again, if you're going back to those, these CapEx and infrastructure bits and pieces, I have a very manual system. I could put a very sophisticated, complicate, complex bit of kit valve banking up somewhere and make things more consistent in that way. Then the rest of it around, it's gonna be still manual, still driven still. And you know, the cost of maintaining it, lifecycle costing for these things are not cheap. Your purchase costs of a brand new bit of kit is probably gonna be about, you know, maybe 30 to 40% of everything you are gonna spend on it. For your lifetime. And you know, much like if you go back to cars and you buy yourself a nice M three or something, you are gonna be servicing that and you are gonna be paying for tires and you are gonna be doing all the bits and pieces around it, and it's gonna, it's a change of skillset and a change of narrative. So yeah, we, we'd love to put a little bit more automation in some areas, but the key thing for us would be putting it in the right place and looking at where that comes in at. So if you were to wave a magic rand and go, Hey, here's a new, you know, big brew block, you know, sophisticated, fully developed brew block for, for, for those sort of numbers. I'd rather take exactly, you know, one fifth to one 10th of that number and read all my pipe work. And I'd gain, I'd gain a couple of hectares instantly and, and then nut few bits and pieces. So I think doing automation in the right sequence is really important, but understanding how your support is in there. And I know there's some great, great guys doing it. Um, you know, you talk to'em regularly from, from from SSV to this fab deck. All those guys that are trying to sort of drive these things and, and, you know. Chris and JJ now, now over there, their brewing supply brew star. But support has to be there and the knowledge base has to be there. And I, you know, I do think I was talking to you the other day about it. I do think there is a gap in, in good engineering in breweries. And it's not that fitting's a bad word, you know, everything's more fitting now. It's changing bits and pieces. But people need to understand what those kits do. You need to understand what service them. So although I'm very manual and I do have a large deviation and I can't control it as much as I really like to, we monitor it and work at it. Something does go wrong. It's a set of spanners and a, and a gasket and, and a new pump plugged in. And it's, you know, it's not, it's not disastrous. We're not looking at someone to get coding and to sort of blow free amps and you know, have the horrors that we, we do see in other areas. So Mm. I think it's, you know, I think that lifecycle costing is probably important to understand. Just whatever you are paying for that CapEx as well as the whole project to install it, you're also gonna be paying a lot of money for a long time. To keep that thing in your plant going so it better pay it off. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, yeah. The return on investment, do you ever calculate that for, for what you do, or is that, is that handled by someone else? No, I do ROIs for things. Um, it's depending on what it is, and I think the benefit of ROIs is, is it's that bit on compromise. It's that bit on startup, it's that bit on, you know, I'm intending this bit of kit to do this for me. I'm gonna get this in yield, I'm gonna get this reduced inputs, I'm gonna get this in increased out outputs. This is what I'm gonna do. And going back and looking at that works really, really, really, really valid. Just to find out how, you know, dramatically wrong. You were at the time. Because it goes both ways. I think you put a bit of kit in and it, it gets used to the intended its usage. And then over a bit of time you've got some good teams and you go, Hey, I could put that through there, or I could just try that over there. And all of a sudden, you know, it's, it's doing something FARs superior than you'd already origin it. Oh, you equally, you've put it in there and go, I've done all this guys and I've made your lives much easier. And then they'll still just drag a line across the floor or, or go that way.'cause it's just quicker for em than, than it's the other bits and pieces. So I think it's a hard juggle. So yeah, that's my two. Yeah. Right. Really interesting. There's a good shout on the automation, uh, you know, it's the lifecycle of, of what you're doing as well. Um, found that, you know, with the, with the manual breweries, there's also, it's, if you are a young brewery then, which I, I know you guys aren't, but if there's people listening, got a fairly young brewery, I think there's actually something nice about having people doing things in a slightly different way. And the only, the only reason I say that is for you, remember at one time we, we introduced brewhouse efficiency, of course, classic me. Um, so the calculator where we had everyone and basically everyone's name was on the side. And so it became a, became a little bit competitive 'cause all the brewers were like, I wanna have the best number. And then, naturally his a brewers are, you know, really competitive with each other in that way. But then what we also found was there was one brewer, his name was Mark, and he was, he was operating like 4% more efficient than everyone consistently. So I was just looking at it going. He needs to show us what he's doing. We followed what he was doing, he rewrote the SOP and everyone became about 3% more efficient. And you know, I sat there and I was like, we would never have got that with automation.'cause what would've happened is I would've programmed what I wanted, what I thought. And then we might have slowly maybe changed and tweaked. But we got that so quickly from just someone doing something. Everyone doing something slightly different in a way that was like constructive that we saw that worked.'cause we could track, it was just an Excel sheet that we Yeah. No, it's, it's, but it's not a hard data. That's a really interesting point actually, Chris. And it's embracing that sort of diversity and saying, look, you know, he's got the idea. He's, he's, he's seen something or he's just got a natural feel for it. I think that's the other side of it. If you're doing it manually, you develop a real feel for what's happening in that time. And it's, I've had those hard conversations where you sort of, you know, you're, and talk to someone's, like when you feel it and he's like, feel what? I'm like, I can't describe it. Um, you know? like you get to know everything. You hear the pumps, Yeah. you can, you can just smell everything is, I dunno, when you're really close to the process, there is definitely like a, a romantic side of brewing in that Yeah. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I hate to discourage that. I get a bit worried when you sort of talk to people that have been with for a while and they're like, oh, I've never tapped a cask. I'm like, oh, okay. Like, I thought everyone had the same narrative I did. I spent, you know, a. Yeah. Same getting, getting that gross sludge out the bottom of old Uh, summer. Yeah. What so bad. There's, That's lot to be said for cakes. Yeah, there is. Yeah. When you don't have to clean 'em outside. I always thought it was worse cleaning them in winter because it was like I'd have to do it outside with a jet wash and like you just get absolutely soaked and like cold to the bone. Looking like an extra perfect storm for like three months. Slowly developing trench, Yeah. Oh my lord. what? The early two thousands were. Yeah. Yeah, that was good stuff. Um, actually, I would stick on the theme of teams, actually, because I feel like for, you know, we, everyone, including me, talk a lot about production in these things when you are growing and, you know, CapEx and equipment, but you know, the team is undoubtedly the most important part of all of growth because without them you don't have anything. Um, really, so how have you managed the team through the growth? Uh, especially when, like we talked about it earlier, when that demand comes in and people are probably expected to do a bit more. Like how do you manage that as a, as a sort of brewing director to, I mean, I, I definitely made mistakes during Covid. I think we all did. We just got thrashed and, you know, and I, I think from, you know, the, the board level above me and my level, we were all sort of just in this huge firefight, uh, to sort of scramble. And I think for me, the power is taking stock of it and just looking at where that went wrong and just going right, what happened here? How is, how is that? And it's, you know, we've constantly evolving sort of an understanding of, of, of how to be better people, managers and how to be better people in that. I think, you know, the empowerment's always been really important for me, um, in a lot of those decision makings and making that quite clear. I. Know your team is what's gonna deliver for you. And, and you know, they've got to be engaged behind that subject equally. They're all people and they're gonna, and it is a job and people are gonna be frustrated with that job, and they're gonna be frustrated with their management and their team members. And it's just sort of learning to sort of ride that wave a little bit. We, you know, we are a, a, as you said, we're not a young brewery, but, you know, we've, we are 12 now and our average 10 years, four years, and of that 12 years, it'd say probably been six, seven years. We've actually been like a sufficient employer. Um, and definitely, you know, I think being reflective on that, it's, it's, it's, it's really worthwhile just sort of looking at how your people are and putting people in the right places. And, you know, I've definitely made mistakes by putting some people in the wrong places. And I've definitely made mistakes by putting, you know, worse people in other bits and, and, and making sure that they're all listened to in that way. And it's, it's definitely, I had a conversation with someone from Plant Up the Road and they're, you know, very, very good at sort of like people engagement, but equally they're not very good at holding people to account. mm. Having conversations about expectations, having conversations about what, what you want from, from a brewer and what you expect to see from them delivering. And you can't teach things like passion or feeling sometimes, but I do expect, you know, an absolute engagement and you know, the understanding of privilege for their subjects and being a hundred percent about, certainly in brewing and celery, you know, you've got to live and breathe this beer. You've got to be excited by it. It, it, I get it. You know, who wants to get up in the morning at, at seven o'clock every morning and taste exactly the same five beers over and over again? Uh, you know, I, I haven't done it for years. It's not something that thrills me anymore. But you do get, you have to bring that energy, you have to bring that excitement and you can probably get away with it in sort of like you're packing in new warehousing lines where people aren't as engaged, but they can be a lot more about them care, they'll care more about the machine than about the beer. And I'm quite happy with that. So, 'cause that's what's gonna get them through as much as, as much as, you know, the beer's, the other guy's problem really. And I think it's just making that, that very clear and making quite a fun, you know, we are quite a good employer for, for, for where we are in South Wales and having a good narrative of the guys and, you know, just championing what that does for you in this industry equally. It's a, it's a tough industry at the moment, you know, the wage rise that have just come in have not helped anyone. You know, we've, we've stomached in, you know, you know, another 200 grand on my, my wage budget this year, which is, you know, it is what it is, but, and we wanna do that. We have desires, but, you know, it's that fight of just making sure that, you know, people are there for you and, and keeping them. Yeah. Yeah.'cause that's the thing, right? Trying to maintain culture whilst growing. especially if you are growing from a small brewery to a, I wouldn't call like a craft brewery. I used to call 'em or independent whatever, to a, to a production brewery. I think the whole expect as you, you said, the expectation of someone's role changes a lot, and it's quite hard for specifically is rapid growth for people to really buy into that. But how important is the culture at, at Tiny Rebel within the team to you? It is really important. It has, it's changed a lot over the years. I mean, you know, it, it's a lot more flexible and fun being very small and, you know, you can be, and certainly the things that got dropped into us, you know, I, I, I'd, I got previous plant to er this one to er, you know, that was a really important sort of game changer. We we're like, look guys, we are, we are taking quantity management seriously at a manufacturing level now. You know, we're taking health and safety seriously at a manufacturing level. Now. We're taking these bits and pieces and it has, I think you call it more corporate, we've called it growing up. It has become slightly more sanitized, more easy. We definitely made mistakes, you know, out into the world and, and in, in insider world. But I think, I think everyone's culture has changed over the last five years, uh, in a big, big way. And being a voice in that's really empowering and having people sort of come in and go, look, we're not accepting that anymore. But we are accepting all of these bits and pieces still. So, and just have that shape and that change. And I think just having people feel comfortable to tell you that they think you are wrong is really, really good. Those nos are important to me. So. You know, I think I'll follow onto you actually, more than anything else. Chris, what are your thoughts on. What are your thoughts on taste panels? Oh, uh, yeah, really interesting. Uh, great question. I Maybe you should do this. It's the best question that's been asked all day. Um, yeah. I personally think taste panels are really important, but they have to be done scientifically. So I, for me, a cardinal sin in a brewery is people standing around tasting beer. I think you may as well just, it's my un humble opinion, but I think it's like you, you may, you just. Spouting off each other and whatever. The MO person who has the most respect in that circle says goes, and you don't really get to any conclusions if you treat it like a science and you blind taste. Test blind is really important because again, the people who are most likely tasting it, in my opinion, are the brewers and they already know everything that's going on. They've already built their opinions on that beer. So if they've seen it, you know it was fermented an extra two days, they already know that. So they're looking for that sample. So you need to make it completely blind. You need to mix in some samples that they won't expect to keep them guessing, and you can turn that into a really, really powerful tool if. only had a small budget to bring in a quality team or a quality department. I would focus more on sensory and obviously a little bit of the classic fiz chem, just just standard fiz chem. Yeah. I would focus a lot of my on training and keeping that taste panel because you can catch so much. In my experience, we caught more on TA panels than we ever have on FS chem analysis. And if anything, it's overruled it. Sometimes your FS chem analysis comes back, it's like, well, this IBU is this, and you're like, well, that should be out. But the taste panel says it's not bitter and it, it's not a fail bitter, and that's because bitterness is way more complex than just an IBU measurement. But that's the beautiful thing about sensory. You can get, it's such a powerful tool if you harness it correctly. If you don't, then it's, it is as worthless as a uncalibrated pH meter, you know, There's a quote. in, in my opinion. No, no. It's, it's, it's really, it's, it's really, really worth, I, I completely agree with what you're saying. Taking people out of it, getting people sort of engaged away from the floor, making sure that they're not biased in any way is almost gonna be an impossible task. The thing I've found about it is, is that if we, you know, I've got external legislators to come in and train and we do offsets and sensor, and I've always found that really good is a sort of. Sort of squeegee open one's eyelids a little bit as to the world of tasting and go, look, this is a really complicated science. It's a really dark art, you know, but, you know, there's a lot to it that you guys need to be aware about. But I dunno if all of that's ever paid off to benefit the team as an actual tasting unit. I've always found that, you know, it's, it's certainly something they should, it makes'em take it more seriously. But I don't think, you know, I find that if they, they understand the product, it's, it's, it's worth doing in there. And so we do it, probably not as scientifically as you'd like, but it is a very valid point to get that checks in there. And the, and the last thing. So before everything gets to packed, or whilst it's being packed, everything gets done every morning. And it's just making sure that everyone's quite happy with that. But it's also making sure that you're making people have those decisions. Have that, hang on minute. That's not right. Take it off the line. Don't do it. Just, just, just stop. Yeah, that's it, right? You get to know your product. Yeah. to know your, you know, you should be tasting water. Tasting water is one of the easiest things you can do. You don't, and if people just go to the HLT or the CLT every day and taste it, you, you could catch one of the biggest problems that's ever gonna cause your brewery. And it's free. It's just a small sample. You just gotta routine it in. Or you stick it on a taste panel and you go, yep, that water tastes like this. But also we've caught before when it's gone, my God, that that water tastes like a swimming pool. And you're like, well, it's 'cause the carbon fill is knackered and we didn't catch it. So now we have to put in that system. But you know, all of a sudden you've got. a weeks of production before you realize that. And you've got all these batches, you've got all these, like you see, I find it. So getting to know your product is, is, is just, like you said, is key, but also through all the stages. Like try it in fermentation. Try it every day in fermentation your taste you do any gravity or pH if you've got a problem. And it's just a really, and then you can focus on it, you get it out. I feel like it's a, such a powerful tool. Uh, but yeah, it has to be. I do think, I do like the training. I've done it. It's very expensive. So it's a big investment, uh, for everyone. I do like it. It does spark people's, it gets people's eyes open. That's a really good way of putting it. And it's funny, after people have done the TA tasting the amount of new flavors and miraculously get found in, in the beer that they've always drank and found it really amusing. Um, but yeah, it's, I, I really like it, but it has to be done in a way that's structured, in my opinion. I, you said you're already doing it with the five beers in the morning. Perfect. Like, you know, you're tasting things that are coming through. That's It is, you know, and it gets everyone sort of brought into sort of their inputs and outputs and what they're, what they're controlling. And it's just really getting people to understand that. I think, um, I've, I've always ran a couple of sort of offsite, well not offsite, but just offline, grab someone, put'em in the bar when it's dead in the morning, give them, you know, five black cups and just leave them in a corner. And I know that there's always a certain amount of like, oh God, Mark's testing me or something today. Uh. Yeah. And do you know what you just touched on? A point that I always forget to make, which I always feel internally, I always forget to make, is there is actually no better place to go and taste your beer than out in the, out in the trade or out in the wild. Like that's what everyone's having. Like you can taste in the brewery and go, my God, that is absolutely banging. And then it goes through and then you don't until you get it in the pub. And that's the real thing, right? Because you got in it. Well I, that's the problem with the way that I was talking about you have it in a cup and it's like all very sensory, blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, the only people that really matter are other the people who are actually drinking your beer. So if you can get a pint and you go, that's banging, or I've got a this has got this in it, or go take it, trace it back, like there's no better place to go do it. I remember, I think it was Camden who used to, who used to do this, but I think they used to give their brewers like a. It was like a, some sort of card or something and they could go out and get like six pints a month of Camden Hills out in the, in the trade. As long as they reported back what they thought. I was like, that is absolute genius. I try to introduce that so many times. It's never really got taken It's a really good point actually. it's like so good because it encourages people, they'll, you know, they'll go out, they'll get in their mates pint and be like, what do you think? What's your feedback? And you get, create this really dynamite feedback loop of people who are actually going out and trying your beer in where you should be drank, which is the pub. And the power in that as well is you've got, you've got your supply chain in there as well. I think you always see Hmm. a lot more variance at the coalface, you know, coming through day to day, but in, you know, two a month or so in pack, two months in pack, a lot of that's gonna tamp down. You're gonna get a much smoother flavor curve and you know, you can go and get that point, you know, from two, three different pubs and what the glassware is doing and what the other bits and pieces variables are much more, you know, tangible. And I think I, I, I personally tried to go on a little bit of rampage to get sort of more sales coming down to sort of communicate between the upstairs, downstairs thing and they're sort of going, oh my God, it's, it's so different. I'm like, yeah, it won't be worry about, it's fine. Yeah. Yeah. We, we stopped letting, um, sales see the sensory scores actually. Uh, that. uh, then their opinions get full and then it's all Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and you know, they, I, I like the fact that in many ways, because they're out more than we are, they're out with in the ivory tower, they're on the floor, they're doing all these bits and pieces. So the more I had my head of sales message me at sort of 10 o'clock last night going, I just tried this and it was slightly different. So I grabbed two kegs this morning just because he's down, he's normally based up in, but you know, just went through. There you go. That was what you tried. That's what it today, what you think. Oh, it's, But that's really good. It's really good to have people challenge you. Just like you said, people who are willing to see, like, I think this is wrong, like perfect because then you can go like, I've got the, I've already got my system set up to check this. yeah, it is. Let's do it. And if it's a problem, brilliant. yeah, because a problem I can go and solve we've, we've caught, we've caught something or we've something. It's having that sort of valid feedback and you never, you know, whether you're doing shelf life tests or sensor, you never really know what a beer looks like at the end of it shelf life until it's hit the end of a shelf life. Yeah. So true. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Re re Yeah, so true. I the shelf life testing is important as well. Very much so. warm and try trying those, 'cause that's supermarket life as well. You know, your can is never cold until it's in the fridge of the, the end user, which is knows how long. So, Yeah. And forced aging, you know, doesn't give you everything for sensory, but it does give you a lot for camera behavior and you know, and you know, you really will understand what that's looking like. In the worst prism it can be viewed and there's more power in than some people realize. I. yeah. Yeah. I, I, you know, we're talking about. If I had a cheat hu to build a cheap pro like quality program, the other thing I would do is buy an incubator and then if I ever thought if I ever got some results back of micro, I will use, just stick it straight in the incubator test for FIS chem. And if it's, and sensory if you, if you can smell and not like scored sensory that is just like this thing smells, it's done and then, you know, but it's, that's a good way of like force aging thing and just basically practical micro is the way I called it. It. Yeah, it's a good point and you will catch that. When I arrived here, Gaz had built a, uh, incubator out of a fridge and a night storage heater. An old fridge, just put like a night storage heater unit in there and do it. And, and then obviously, you know, it worked for a couple years. I was like, let's just get an incubator. We've got the, we, we've got some money on budget, let's get some incubator. Um, but to this day, even though quite a few of that team are now not longer with us, most of the brewing department call it heat fridge, So good. but on the heat fridge, we just, when are we gonna stop there? So I think that'll be a tiny rebel thing for the rest. So it's going in 50 years time, there'll be someone looking at it going, why are we still calling this a fucking heat fridge? It's so good. I actually do, you know, there's a lot of lab equipment. You can just make yourself like that and it basically does exactly the same function. Top tip for me, get hold of some universities, get hold of some, uh, some laboratories that are around me, particularly student focused labs, they replace their kit fairly regularly. They have, they, they, they don't like selling it per se, but if there's charity done or uncertainty, practical experience to be brought in there, you can pick yourself up a microscope for a couple hundred quid or something cheaper. That's, that's certainly worthwhile. And, you know, nothing more than practical explanation of getting a uni student in to sort of show you how to do and all these bits and pieces. So I've, I've definitely exploited that before. That is a great tip. a great tip.'cause lab exp lab equipment is expensive. Brand new, like Yeah. crazy money. Yeah. And it, it, it, it doesn't, and it's cost of quality, isn't it? You'd never know quite how it's landing. It's, you know, you, you need it, you're gonna spend it, but you're not, you're not gonna be able to do an ROI on it easily. You're not gonna do that. It's like cost, quality, just costs. Accept it, put the money into it. Hmm. absolutely. Mark, I'm gonna go a good, really good question for, I've been wanting to ask this for, uh, all, all episodes. So if you had to be a consultant right now for a 5,000 hectoliter, a year brewery who were looking to expand, and they said, what are the key things I should look at before expanding my production? would they be? I think you've gotta do a capacity map. You've got a do capacity map, do your capacity map and no utilities and you know, really question what numbers are coming into it. Come at it with a clean eye as well. Don't just accept that this is how it's always been. You know, look at where you're going through it. Look, get some. Take some good data things, it doesn't have to be too sophisticated. How long did it take for you? how long does it take me to produce that beer and on the ma on the mash tongue, kettle and whirlpool hot back, or you know, straight through. If you're not, how long has it taken me to get that primary fermentation done? How long has it taken me to condition and how quickly can I get this out the door? And then start realizing how many times you can, you can sort of turn that kit reasonably within your staffing parameters. And then how much more could you possibly get out? If you've got a lot of head space, if you've got a lot of room going in there, if that Ashton's not too thick, you know, if you've got the room in your ke uh, kettle, then, then go for that. You know, I, I don't really proponent for sort of high dry, hot beers, high gravity, it doesn't work. Um, but. You know, certainly you can go a couple of points and, and then the dry hot recipe can build that. If you've got that space in the tank, perhaps don't do that downstream, but do it, do it as a flush through after you kettle and put a couple of nice pints of water in there, rather than really crappy words. Um, and I think that once you've got that as a map, start looking at where your utilities are, what your discharge rates can be, where your water and feed can be from there. That's, that's, that's your capacity. And once you've got that, take all those numbers and take it at a, at a weekly and daily level and look at your production length and actually give you what your sort of maximum capacity is per month or per week. And then times that by your 50. Don't do 52 'cause no one, 'cause you need two weeks somewhere. I assure you, you do it by your 50 weeks and then you should be able to come out with, that's where your volume is. Start looking at your, then your commercials, where your sales are, and then look at those pinch points in there as, as to what you need to do in there. You should be able to do some very good, easy, quick work as to figure out where the, where those snags lie. Um, and, and, and then really push, push that, push that boat, push that rocket as quick as you can do because then the cheap, a cheap answers in terms of capacity, you know, it is tanks, it is little bits of utility. It's not that engine room for brewhouse, it's not sort of infrastructure and pipe work and drainage. You know, you can do some bits and pieces quite quickly. So that's, that would be my, uh, that would be my recommendation. Yeah, really good. And then you'd probably, what you would recommend the CapEx on your pinch points. So you do your, you would do your capacity plan. You'd see like, okay, I can do this. This is my max capacity here, but if I was to increase by this, like a separator, I could reduce this thing by four days and it would increase it by Exactly. Or if you are waiting three days for it to carbonate. I know that is a different in feeling product and there has to be a wider conversation around that. But if it's gonna save you two days and you could turn that tank in that timeframe, even stuff like downtime or tank is important to build into this. What does it take to clean it? How long does it take to clean it? What is your servicing plan like on that? Because if it's, if it's taking you longer than an hour to fully CIPA tank and empty and get rid of it, perhaps you need to have a look at how you, how you're going about investment in CIP investing, recovery, investing in those timeframes. Um, and, and that's where you really need to go into it. It's very easy to just go off and look at a turnkey brewing project, but you know, they're expensive. And we'll talk, go back to, you need to have paid off what you've done and living with Jesus out. Hmm. Yeah, especially in this day and age investments are, uh, are, are becoming business critical. Really everyone, you know, you need the ROI financially, or they should always, normally there is an environmental payback as well. But yeah, that, that financial one is the key. I mean, you know, if you brewing, if you brewing less efficiently, but you don't have to invest in a whole new brewery, that's a, that's an easy trade off, you know, with whatever sustainability scope you want to look through. It really is.'cause one is not the right answer, unless it really has to be kept there in that sort of efficiency. So I'll, I'll trade a couple of, you know, percentage points on efficiency if it means I've got brew 20 times less in a year, and that's, that's, Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I totally get, yeah. Yeah, it's nice. And, and so you still haven't invested in a new brew house, right. How often, how often do you think the brew house is really the, the key place to invest? um, I, I, I, I often don't, unless it's big capacity gains. I think if you've got a 5,000 hec, let's say 5,000 HEC a year and, and you've taken that from the manufacturer, your duty is to go and check that and how you are using it.'cause he'll have, you know, you'll have given him a load of stuff that you did three years ago and he'll sort of go on some numbers and it's your beer, it's your products. You should be, you should be doing that. And that's where that sort of comes in at. You can run them longer. I think the only time to do it is when it's, it's, you know, it's a lot of growth or you just accept that you don't want to run that you don't, you don't wanna run into nights, you don't wanna run days, you don't wanna take your turn like you don't do Saturdays. Experiences that I know you and I have both had over the years, you know, and that's, that's great. That's you putting your people first. That's exactly the right thing to do. And you know, any, any grant, any sourcing, any government, any loan, if you're not putting people into business plan, you're doing yourself justice. And that's, that's again, that's a, that's a really valid answer.'cause you're keeping your culture, you're keeping your vibrancy, you're putting quality first. You put everything we've really talked about today, which is be more people focused than anything. It's, you know, that's you. So if that's the answer, then yeah, go ahead. Get, get in, get a nice big, shiny new brew house. But you know, if you are getting a four vessel brew house, you better be turning that 12 times a day Yep. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Um, well Mark, look, thank you so much for your time. That's everything for me. Um, yeah, really appreciate it, mate. It's been absolutely fascinating. Uh, I wish I had this talk with you, 10 years ago, but, uh, ago. I. yeah, I guess there is that. Yeah, I wish I had this part because I go in the future, listen to this and then go back in time because I think I would've been significantly better at my job. Um, really good man. That was absolutely fantastic level of information. It's really cool to see. And I think, you know what, what you've done there is amazing that you should be really, really proud of it. And, uh, yeah, it's cool to have that sort of brewery engineering background as well. I think that's a, you know, we talked about that at BX not We did Chris. Chris, and I think it's, you know, thank you very much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure. It's always a pleasure talking to you, Chris. I always learn stuff, so, but it's, I think, you know, we are in a, we're in a wonderful industry that's got so many bits and pieces and I think, I think, you know, the more that we look at, you know, ESG sustainability, everything we need to do for, to keeping people right, the most sensible thing we can do is, is really make gains in our processing methodology, in our processing efficiency. I was, um, lucky enough to be on a maltings trip a while ago, uh, where I was the token small brewer. Uh, the other guy was Diaggio, which heard of them. Uh, and he was the main grain for Diaggio and he was talking a lot about how difficult it's to maintain a malting spec, but he didn't once mention that it would be less input for the farmers to be, to trust brewers. Use some enzymes, use some bits and pieces. I know you've championed over the years and I think. Anything like that needs to be viewed in that narrative. It has to be holistic. It has to be her supply chain, and, and it has to be down to us to solve the issues now with, with the technical elements of our businesses. Let's, let's work at it. That is a poignant way to end this episode. Alright man. Thanks. Really appreciate you mate. Thanks, Chris. Speak to you soon. Well, a big thank you to Mark and thank you to everyone who's listened to this episode. If you enjoyed this episode or think there's people who you know would find value in it, please make sure you share. It's one of the most important parts of this podcast growing is you sharing it with friends, colleagues, anyone you think who might find interesting what me or Mark has said. So thank you for your support and I will catch you on the next episode of the Modern Brewer podcast.