EP 03 // Evin O'Riordain // The Kernel Brewery

Everyone knows The Kernel, but does anyone really know The Kernel?

When cans and colourful, creative labels became synonymous with craft beer, they didn’t react.

When everyone expanded their breweries to meet demand, they didn’t.

When investments and acquisitions were everywhere, they never considered that route.

And yet, here we are more than 16 years since they started brewing, and The Kernel is widely considered the most influential, iconic modern UK brewery.

So who really is The Kernel, and how have they achieved that?

Today I sit down with Evin O’Riordain, Founder of The Kernel to discuss just that.

Transcript

0:06

Welcome everyone. thanks for joining. This is episode three of the Path Makers Podcast, proudly supported by Sellar. So thanks Sellar again for, for making this all happen. we are here today very, very pleased and grateful, to be here with, Evan O'Riordain. So, thank you so much for coming. Evan is the, is the founder of The Kernel Brewery an absolute institution of good beer within London. When I was... Preparing the podcast or even thinking about the podcast. Obviously I'm speaking to a lot of people about path makers and who's people that should be on this. And um, I think if you ask any brewer in this country, it's probably 99% of them will reference, The Kernel as an inspiration. I know you're very modest person. You probably don't love hearing that, but, it is true. and, and so I'm really looking forward to getting into a lot, of, hearing about how that's come about, how you've made that happen and where you are today.'cause today you just told me earlier, is the 16th. We're celebrating our 16th birthday today. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. So what's going on, at the tap room? Yeah. Okay. Just inviting some friends around. We've got some, Alumni, you know, some old, yeah. Some of our old team who've gone off and done their own things like James from Ideal Day and Gordon and Emma from Newbarns, Toby's coming up from Burning Sky. Nice. with some of their beers as well, so. Oh, very cool. We have some of ours and some of theirs and. Alright, so. One of the things before we kick off, I always do, is obviously the Path Makers podcast is a little bit different than most podcasts'cause we're not gonna go through your story or journey kind of step by step. the focus isn't so much what you did, but the how and the why that you did it. But that being said, one of the things I want to do is for anyone who's looking to know more about The Kernel who hears this and goes, Hey, yeah, I want to, I wanna read into a little bit more I always try and give a bit of some sources, some references. I obviously, was doing a lot of research for this. I think, there's one, uh, uh, piece that stood out for me big time, which was, uh, Claire Bullen's piece, which was in Good Beer Hunting. Called in Bermondsey, A steady heartbeat. I would a hundred percent, suggest to everyone to go read that, even if you, you know The Kernel story and you haven't read that, go read it. It's a brilliant piece. Is there anything else that you'd highlight? Not off the top of my head. Okay. Um, that one is probably the most comprehensive, at least in terms of capturing the brewery as a whole. There's a nice piece by Lily Waite on Table Beer. Okay. Which was in, um, Pellicle, I think. Right on. Okay. Which, yeah, more focuses on that beer, but it also does a good job of capturing. Yeah. Some of the essence, how the answers, yeah. Yeah. Certain questions about the brewery. Awesome. Great. And then actually Claire is, I believe part of the, the Pellicle team now as well. So, um, if you like that one, check out more of, the work there and in Pellicle who do a great job of, of, creating pieces, storytelling around this industry. So shout out to them. Um, let's get started though. So the first thing, so looking at some of these decisions that kind of shaped the path, the first thing I wanted to focus on is the backstory is, is, you know, you, you were working, at, Neil's Yard, right? And you were over in New York and you tried some beer and that opened your mind to, I guess, you know, new age hops and what beer could be. You came home, you started brewing. That's, I I That's the five second. Is that accurate? Yeah. Yeah. That's completely correct. Yeah. But you came back and yet you were doing that, you're playing with hops and then you, you start the brewery. But you, you kind of go in two way, two, two kind of directions with the brewery. One is, is very much experimentation with hops and the other one is heritage styles and mostly I believe London Heritage styles. Where, how did you land on that? This, I mean, I think there's a couple of things. One is like growing up in Ireland, dark beer, Guinness Yeah. Or Beamish or Murphy's or wherever you happen to be Is, is so completely part of drinking culture that it's, it's just there. Whereas coming over here, it was a shock to me to find so few dark beers, unless you're in an Irish pub and you can find Guinness and, and actually people being slightly afraid of dark beers in a certain way. There, there, there's a certain relationship to them in a pub culture here, which is completely different than Ireland. Um, so I think just for me, just stouts were so much part of how I grew up drinking because Guinness would've also produced, you know, the, their foreign export stout. And, um, yeah, coming over here you discover like the Nigerian imported foreign export Guinness. And, you know, they're all really quite amazing things. Um, and historical also in a certain sense, lot of storytelling. Um, but the specific inspiration for our series comes from, so when I came back from the states I helped, I was one of the first members of the London Amateur Brewers, so a home brewing club that used to meet up actually above the Wenlock arms. Okay. Um, every, whatever, Monday, Tuesday, once a month. Uh, and it was, you know, the best education because you know, you taste everybody else's beers. You rip them to shreds, you learn a hell of a lot. Two members there, one of them was a guy called Mike, used to be also part of the Durden Park Beer Circle, which is a home brew club that started, I think in the seventies or eighties and specialized in looking for recipes in old British Brewing archives. Okay. So they produced a, you know, like a publication called Old British Beers and how to make them, where they scale like a, you know, a Truman's recipe from 1800 and scale it to like one gallon and everything would be what. You started doing that then? Yeah, so the first time I came across this, Mike brought in this recipe, was like flour Christmas stout from 1837. And it, it was, it just, it blew my mind, you know, it was just, somebody's home brew that he'd kind of, and the thing is also that he'd changed half of the recipe because it didn't suit him, you know? Okay. The recipe had load of sugar. He's like, I don't want put any sugar in the recipe. Says, you know, mature for six to nine months. This, I, I packed this two weeks ago. You know, the recipe said, use Fuggles and Goldings, and he is like, well, I didn't have any Fuggles, I threw in some cascade. So, you know, it's kind of just also learning the ways of trying to isolate what's the important thing here. And that's always the question when you're, you know, dealing with an old recipe. It's like, do you repeat? Or try to repeat as closely as possible what they've done on a process level or an ingredient level, or are you actually just looking to try and make the best beer possible? And sometimes that means maybe changing things. We've changed everything already anyway. All the malts we use are coming from a complete different process than they would've used, you know, 200 years ago. You know, we're fermenting and stain the steel, you know. That's gonna be quite different from fermenting and wood. You know, all of these things are already so different that, you know, our historical interpretations are actually just a bit of a keyword interpretation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And they're probably massively different from, you know, what would've been the case back in, uh, you know, the 1800s say. Yeah. But, you know, but what, what were they trying to do back then? They were trying to make good beer that people would enjoy so that, you know, they had a, a business, you know, they were trying to, you know, survive. And in one sense that's all, that's all we're doing as well. The other part of answering that question is also to do with just being here in London, because again, coming from Ireland, you see, you know Guinness everywhere. Guinness, you know, all of that style of beer started in London, you know, whatever, 1700s, porters, the whole story of porters and stouts, you know, being born in this city also, you know, those breweries being the first steps of industrialization, you know, the first big mass processes that, you know, factories, I suppose. Yeah, those first factories were the, you know, the first breweries were the first factories, the first starts of, of the whole industrial revolution. And they were all here in London often, you know, most, many of them just here on the south bank of the Thames, so, okay. Like recipes that we used from like Barkley Perkins, which used to be, you know, just a couple of hundred, well maybe half a kilometer down the, down the river towards, past London Bridge. Um. Okay. So for us starting, I think it was also always been quite important to try and find a relationship with what it means to brew in London. Okay. You know, and is that we're here, you know, so what, what, what is it? What's appropriate to us in terms of our brewing practice? In London, that would be different than if we were in Manchester or in Los Angeles or in Melbourne or you know, wherever. What, what is, what does it mean to brew in London? And obviously we have that tradition and history here, the most of which is lost obviously the breweries have all closed, you know, there's just basically Fullers still here that have that kind of link to a, you know, a physical, historical past, but we don't have one. So this is part of our kind of ways of connecting, you know, so it's our ways of sticking roots down into the city in a way that kind of allows us to you know, to build on whatever our ancestors have done. Okay. Um, so it's about, yeah, it's about that sort of community and connection with a place. So these recipes, as you mentioned before, are pretty much all old London recipes, which is fine. There were hundreds of breweries and, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years of recipes, things like that. And then lots of, you know, very helpful archivists who, who pull recipes out. Yeah. Um, and yeah, it just allows us to try and, you know, just strengthen that Londonness of what we do because, you know. As you say also that you know that modern hop forward American style of beer is kind of universal at this point. It's not, yeah, it's not a London thing. It's not tied to a no. In doing that, was that, was that important to you? To the brand, which I, I think the one thing we'll get on this later, but obviously the brand of The Kernel and you are, I think not just you, but the team is, is, is one and the same really. But is that, or did you feel like that was something important to do for the drinkers, for the community? Like what, what was...it It, it's all sounds like it's a good story. I a hundred percent get it. But why was that important to you? Because we find those beers delicious. Okay. First of all, and the second thing is, you know, there's a lot of hubris in brewing and people saying they, the next new thing, the next big thing, you know, the next hop variety, you know, everything is, is quite fresh and bold and everybody wants a new whatever'cause we all have such short attention spans, but it, it's just to be able to be reminded constantly that this beer that you're drinking now is a recipe from 1856. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't just invent beer last week, you know? Yeah, yeah. We talk about, you know, the shit days when there was no good beer. And then, you know, all of us came along, us little craft brewers and made things amazing. And now beer's delicious and everybody's happy. It's like, nah. Beer, Good beer's been made for many, many, many millennia. Yeah. And you know, this is part of us just reminding ourselves that, yeah, we're sitting here 'cause that's cool.'cause good beer was being made hundreds of years ago. We didn't, we didn't invent this. I'm Canadian. Uh, the brewing history of Canada is not nearly as rich as, uh, as it is here. So, uh, I love, I love that because I think one of the things that I noticed coming over. From, I mean, a few stops along the way, but originally from Canada. Was, was was that there is, there is obviously a drinking culture, but there's a, there's a history to it, which is so rich and actually, as you said, like was kind of forgotten. Um, and not talked about and, and there is so much there whether that be, I mean I've talked in a few, uh, the first episodes about cast quite a lot and the whole storytelling there, but, but what you're talking about here, there is such richness to it. And that's, that's such a valuable thing to have in storytelling with people and bringing people on a journey that, that it's, it's really interesting to hear that.'cause you're, you're not, you're not inventing the wheel, reinventing the wheel or, you know, you're not inventing the wheel. You're, you're kind of, you're, you're, you're, you're using some of this that's that's been there for a long time, but has been forgotten, right? Yeah, a little bit like. I was talking to Simon about the, uh, the Burton Union. Yeah, you guys just did the collab on there, didn't you? Recently? We did one yeah, but well, yeah. Last year. Yeah. Was it last year? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so yeah. Perfect example of it, right? It's like the, what a story, and it's just like, yeah, this was, and it adds, it adds something. Yeah. You know, it adds something. I think like physically with their system, but even just using an old recipe, you would just add a level of meaning to what you're doing. Yeah. Like there's an intentionality there to, to give that beer something just slightly more than, I dunno, I don't know how to express it other than it, it's, it affects the way we kind of approach brewing Yeah. that beer. Very cool. So, and, and obviously if you have something physical like the Burton Union system, then that physically means you have to address the brewing, Yeah, In a different way. Yeah. You know, because the whole system is, well, yeah, it's pretty bonkers. No, no, but it, it, it's brilliant. No, no, I get it. Absolutely brilliant. I love, I love the story of it. Yeah. So the fact that they're, you know, the fact that they, they have one of these systems and are using it, is. It's cool. Yeah. It's so impressive. Shift a little bit. Mm-hmm. Um, to, I mentioned brand. I wanna talk a little bit about brand, although probably you don't think, you don't think of it hugely like that. So for me, like there's a, there's a spectrum when it comes to brand. Um, there is, I'm gonna go on the polar sides through the opposite ends of the spectrum. One end of the spectrum is, is what we'll call like a fabricated brand. It's like, this is what we want to be. And I think the biggest or best example of that would be if you look at the, the, the global brewers, things like that. There's no, you know, it's, a lot of it is, is, you know, we, here's what we want this brand to be, it's purpose, blah, blah, blah. And then you spend a lot of money to make consumers believe that, right? At the end of the day. Um, then you have the opposite end of the spectrum, which I would say that is The Kernel. Um, and The Kernel is one where it's not what we want this brand to be. This is who we are and, and we are who we are, and the brand is us. And that's, is that, is that accurate? Like, that's my view of it as an outsider. Is that how you feel about it? I do as little thinking about brand as possible. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. To me it's just, it's, it's, it's an, you know, it's obviously involved in how people perceive us. Yeah. But because I don't have any, I don't. I think with the, like you, you identified quite clearly the brand is how you are perceived by other people. Sure. But I don't feel. I don't ask myself that question. Okay. You just do So how we are perceived is how, as close to how we are. Now, this is an idealized vision and how obviously I'm not an idiot and I don't, completely disregard how we look to other people. Yeah. But it generally, I try not to let it guide decisions, I suppose. Okay. Some of that, like, I mean, I don't, I don't know all of the, all of the partic, particularities of it, but like, in reading, a little bit about the brewery and speaking to people, I know for instance, when you hire people, you're not necessarily looking for brewers or brewing people you're looking for characters and, and people with, I guess with the principles and the values that the, the business, um, has. I've heard like, you, you don't, you don't buy on Amazon, is that. Am I? Is that true or? That's correct. That's correct. Okay. Yeah, so, and we stopped selling to Whole Foods when they got bought by Amazon. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So there's, there's a lot of these things, which I mean, um, that, that, again, you go back to the brand, I'm just gonna use that word. I know you That's okay. So that was, that's all very intentional. That's like, these are our values. This is who we are, this is who we're gonna be. and, and you just go about doing it. And the brand, how people perceive that is, is how the brand develops. Is that, is that the way you kind of think about it then? Yeah, but I'm not even, thinking about how people perceive it. Okay. I'm overanalysing it. Yeah. I think you're No, no, I tend to do that. Don't worry. No, no. You're not overanalysing it, but you're overanalysing me in the sense that I, I don't think, I actually really don't feel I know how other people perceive us. Okay. Really, apart from the odd, you have a personal conversation with somebody and they tell you something about, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, which is fine. I can handle that personal relationship. I don't have a bigger picture of how, you know, our brewery might look to the outside. Those are things that are important to us. And if they are visible to people on the outside, then that, that is a good thing. But I don't feel I work very hard or very well towards making those things necessarily visible. Like there are lots of principles, you know, whatever. Like I don't, you know, I'm actually quite surprised you bring up something like Amazon 'cause, it's not something that, that's not a message that we, try and convey. Yeah. It, it's, it's just a simple fact of working. There there are maybe benefits to making that message known. there are principles that maybe need supporting that we don't support very well. But I don't go around thinking about things in terms of how they might appear from the outside, really, I think is Sure. Yeah, yeah. Is. Part of it, but I think it's probably more visible in things like, like we don't do t-shirts. Okay. Like merchandise is like the brand on a, an object which becomes, you know, a vehicle for messaging. But to me that that's not, we, we make beer. So our name, The Kernel is on a, a bottle. that's where it belongs. Okay. It doesn't, on a t-shirt, that would be branding pure and simple. And that's for us, the reason why we don't put names on t-shirts is 'cause the, name is only on the beer. To go back to how you described it at the beginning, we wanna, you know, be the, the brand to be synonymous with who we are. Not the brand to be on a t-shirt, that for example, somebody else could buy and wear. And then, then what happens with, It's, it's, it loses its anchor. Yeah. You have an element of, well, control's the wrong word 'cause that's not what you're trying to do. But at the same time, like then it's all kind of within, Iit's all ringfenced a little bit like this is, this is the touch points of our name. This is where people are gonna see it, and it's all around the things you want it to be around, which are the products and things that are important to you, right? That is that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. okay. how, how do you maintain that? and so what I mean by this is of course, like, and I know I'm just gonna, again, I'm gonna use a spectrum. I know. Part of this is absolutely not the way you do it, but you have a lot of people that will be like, oh, we've got these principles, these values, we put 'em on a wall. But at the end of the day, as as, as you have more people in the business and you, you have more people in the brewery, how is it that everyone then kind of shares those principles and knows these are the things that we, the values and the principles that we have, and we're gonna protect those because there's undoubtedly, in the journey of the last 16 years, been tons of pressure against those things, I would imagine. But how do you maintain it? It's hard. I don't think we actually do as good a job of that as we could. Okay. And how so? Well, it's just, yeah, it's, uh, I think in many organizations the, the main issues are often communication and just making sure that everybody is aware as much as possible of, you know, what decisions there are, why they're being made, and, and the reasons behind that. And, it can be easy for me to make a decision, but, if I'm not sharing the reasons why with the team, or, or they may not even know that I'm, whatever, making a certain decision, then they're not always just. I'm not always able to communicate that Sure. Easily and clearly with everybody. So, although I feel, I feel it, that we do collectively hold these certain principles, it, it's not something that I can really test that well. Okay. And so it's a little bit ambiguous. and there are probably, there are probably, there's, it's like 20 of us in the brewery and six in the taproom now. So, amongst those people there's gonna be a little bit of variation in Sure. In, what individuals feel about certain issues. How much of that does come down to, to people, bringing who comes onto the team? I wanna say like profile, but making sure that there's people that share those values from the start as opposed to coming in and then saying, these are the values, and them having to learn those values. Yeah. I think it's a lot easier to, to find people that share those values. Okay. Before they start working in the brewery. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things I talked about, there's always pressures I mean, inevitably, especially when you're successful as you've been inevitably, um, there's opportunities and opportunities can put pressure on those values, right? So for instance, and the, the obvious one is, is scale, right? So you have, you know, in a time where, everything was booming. You're...People that, you know, started early off in the, in the, in the brewing industry with, you see breweries around you growing a lot, all that. I'm sure in that period of time there will have been people that have approached say, you should do more. You could do this, you could do that. You could do that. How? How have you stayed away from that? Because I think, we're in a place now in 2025 where, I think there's a lot of people that do think that way. Like I, I work with, quite a few breweries in the UK and a lot of the conversation now isn't about growth. It's about, we want to be around this and helping people define what that looks like, and this is who we are and, and, okay, so maybe there's a bit of growth to reach that because you need to fill the brewery. But, but it's, it's about being, what's right for you, the business, the person, whoever it is. Um, so that's changed. I think that was not a conversation people were having very much up until a couple of years ago. Before that it was like New Tank, right? And we got more sales. New tank. Let's do this. And I was down the road in London, in, in a lot of those years in a brewery that was obviously owned by, by InBev, growing a lot, doing the polar opposite of what you guys, uh, you and team were doing. And, and so, I have an incredible admiration. I don't, I'm not, I don't think growth is necessarily bad, but I have a lot of admiration for what you and the team did, because it would've been incredibly hard to stick to that value at that time because it was kind of like really going against the grain as kind of maybe ridiculous as that sounds now. How did you do that? It actually would've been quite a lot of work to grow beyond where we got to. Okay. So we got to where we got to relatively quickly, there was, so we spent a couple years just on a 600 liter kit Yeah. In a railway arch. And then two and a half years later we moved to our current site. And we filled that up maybe a couple years later. So there was no obvious way of us making more beer there. The thought of moving was just exhausting. And, and I mean, there's a couple of things. One, I I mentioned earlier, so we moved down to the new site as part of Spa Terminus, which is a group of like-minded food producers. we already had a community and a, a family of sorts there. So moving kind of, you could move, but where, where are you gonna find space for a brewery in Central London? You know? Yeah. I cycle to work. I, I don't wanna, move to a big production facility outside that doesn't that, that rips up those roots that we're trying to stick down. And the other thing that's always been important to us is just like the attitude that we carry as, as a team towards brewing, packaging, sending stuff out, as far as possible, well, all of our beer, we make ourselves. Yeah, you're right, there's a, we didn't maybe have to grow the brewery. Maybe we could get somebody else to brew a beer for us. That, that actually doesn't make sense in our logic. And so it's, it's something that still doesn't make sense. Even though, you know, we don't have capacity. Maybe if we had more beer, we could sell it, but then you turn that, that beer that's brewed somewhere else, like to us wouldn't feel like ours anymore. That's like putting our name on a t-shirt, it's kind of like, yeah, you can just use that name, Kernel to sell this product that's been produced somewhere else. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure the beer would be delicious and I'm, I'm not knocking the process of, you know, of, of brewing beers for other people. It's, it's completely fine. It just doesn't suit us. Yeah. Yeah. so, those decisions are, most of those decisions about growth come down to that sort of attitude that we carry as a team towards producing, brewing, packaging beer. And that's another thing why growing, I think we always were slightly concerned that if we got much bigger, we would have to change that approach, that it feels like we wouldn't be able to maintain the attitude with which we, carry into work every day. If we got to the stage of, becoming like, you know, a big grownup, proper production brewery. We all know, many of the team have worked in other big breweries and many have friends who work in other big breweries. And we all know friends who turn up every day and have to brew five gyles of this lagger to these specs, and then they'll do the same the next day and the same, it's that there's a whole process. Maybe they have night shifts, there's a whole way of looking at what you do Yeah. as work. That's not how we approach it, and we actively want to have that. The simple freedom of turning up in the morning and go, oh, we're brew a pale a today, and then going, oh, what hops will I put in? Let me go look in the fridge. Oh look, there's some new fresh Nelson Sauvin from 2025. Yeah, brilliant. Crack it open. All the team gets a little sniff. And that, you know, it's, it's maybe slightly illusion of freedom, but you know, the brewer that day has the ability to do something That's just slightly different. It's not the same. Yeah. Yeah. And that's always been part of how, that's how we try and give meaning to each individual beer. So that pale ale for us is never trying to be the same as, we don't have a benchmark or a platonic ideal of a pale ale should taste like this because then every time you, you go there, you're, you're missing that mark. the idea that, the way we approach brewing is to try and give each batch the ability to be specifically itself. And that doesn't have to be the same as the last one. Okay. So, and when we worried that we would lose that if we got, you know, if we got bigger and had to do more, you know, just brewing by, uh, rota, I suppose. Now the, obviously we never got to that stage, so I'm not, maybe, maybe that doesn't happen or wouldn't happen, or, you know. No, I think, I mean, I could, it's funny'cause as you talk, I, I'm like, I'm getting excited'cause you know, in reality a lot of my time within the industry has been spent doing the polar opposite of what you, uh, of, of what you've done right. Is, is trying to lead businesses that were very focused on growth and moving sites and expanding sites, and, and, and you're right, like all that stuff does change. And you know, a lot of times it happens slowly, right? It's like there's this, and then there's this and this, and all of a sudden, five years later, it's very different. And that's what I mean, like that's why I have an admiration for it, because, um. Again, when you're successful and, and, and people are, you know, you could do this, you could do that. Like the confidence, the ability to say no, which is something that, you know, I think is, is, seems to be a, a big part of this story. The theme of, of it, but not in a negative way, in a confidence way because you know who you are and what you want to be. I mean, that is admirable because it's been very hard to do that in this industry when there was just so much pushing in a very different direction. And I, I saw the other side of that, so when you're talking there, I'm like, oh man, that's, that's great because, because, um, I think that's something that a lot of breweries got lost in and, and, and moved away from that. Right. Um, what's interesting, is that, I think like when I was thinking about this before coming in today, but when, you know, when breweries start up, there is, it sounds like from the start, you know, what you started with is, is here's what we want this to be. Here's who we are. I think a lot of breweries, and this is a bit of, you know, I've didn't, I've never opened a brewery. Uh, I have worked in, in pretty early stages of breweries, but like a lot of breweries tend to start with, this is what I wanna make, and then, okay, I'll put this on it. And then, you know, and then it kind of, at some point in that journey, you start going, okay, and this is what we actually want to be. Like what you want to be doesn't at the start, it kind of happens when it needs to happen. Where it sounds like for you guys it started very early as like, this is what we want to be. Is that true or no? I'm not sure. Okay. Because when I started, I had no experience working in another brewery. My only brewing experience was homebrewing, you know, 50 liter buckets. And I tried some American beers and thought I knew. I really had no clue. Well, you did pretty well with it. Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying we did badly, but, uh, it, it didn't come from a place of experience, so I, you know, even, our first beers were all experiments, so, you know, at least in terms of what we did, the beers we produced, they weren't, they weren't fixed. Okay. But that was also a joy of that period of time. You know, 2009 there was, I mean, Jasper had the horseshoe. Yeah. There weren't really many other breweries in London. You know, Sambrook's had just opened, there was like nine breweries, I think in the whole city. Yeah. Apart from the odd brew pub. And so you could, you know, you had a freedom to mess around or change things or, you know, I think now if you opened a brewery, you'd want to know what you were doing. Okay. At least beer wise. The, the level of quality is so much higher now, and the market is pretty full that, if you open a brewery now you really need to know what you're doing. Whereas we, we learned on the job, there was a bit more freedom and space to do that, I think. Okay. Um, but in terms of values, if they haven't changed, which I kind of hope they haven't too much, then yeah, those same principles probably inform the way we act now. So you can probably definitely see a, a linear link between how we did things then and how we do things now. Okay. Even if all of, you know, the beers and the technology and stuff have changed. Switching gears a little, a little bit. Obviously recently there was the, the news that you guys are going into Waitrose, which I think for a lot of people in the industry was, was, felt like. I, I don't think anyone really knows The Kernel very well because as you say, it's not a brand. It's not something like it, it's, it's about the internal, it's about who, who you are internally. And I think there's a bit of an enigma, if that's the right word, to a, around it. So I think, you know, as is always the case, when there's news, people tend to judge it based on their belief of what someone stands for. And so I think Kernel's a unique one because I don't, you know, because of, of that, of that, like ringfence that we talked about earlier, is probably the only people that really understand are the people like yourself and the people that have been close to the business. But I think from an external point of view, it was like, okay, Waitrose, that's, that seems different. Why was, is that the thing to do now? Like how does that fit into it all for you? The, I think it, the main driver is that the last couple of years we've been doing a lot of, say a lot more one-offs and specials and, monthly releases and things like that, which, it's kind of, it's fine and it's fun. It's fun to make a, you know, whatever we do, a hoppenwiesse or mm-hmm. Things like that. But, it kind of, I, for us, it felt that the one-off beers, I think we, we enjoy as fun, but they don't mean as much to us as the things that we brew regularly and love brewing. Some of these old recipes that we talked about earlier. In this case, we're selling table beer and Export India Porter to Waitrose. The strategic decision behind this is that it allows us to make more of those beers more frequently. Okay. Which I think makes us slightly happier than having a, you know, another new thing every couple months, so it's, it's just to be able to, I suppose, rationalise what we do. Okay. Just, just streamline our production slightly. So like, the warehouse was getting pretty full, and it just means that the more different beers you have available, the more spots in the warehouse you need to pick things from. And once you get to a certain point, it's just like, okay, it's getting a little bit chaotic here. Can we just make it just a little bit more efficient? I mean, and, and Waitrose was, I suppose somebody we'd been talking to for a while okay. Or they'd been talking to us for a while, and, I think for me the, in terms of like we, we mentioned Amazon or whatever, what's hugely important to me is like who do things benefit? And most companies obviously, if they're doing well then the shareholders are the ones that get rewarded. But often the shareholders are investors who, obviously just take money from the business. Whereas Waitroses being part of the John Lewis partnership means that, they are employee owned. Which is a completely different political and ideological system. Okay. Than a, a limited company whose, you know, shareholders are banks or investment companies or, or whatever. Yeah. So from a, from an ethical point of view, yeah. Yeah, I have huge respect for Okay. Them as a, as a company. Cool. We take a bit of a break. We'll get into some stuff, but I think I mentioned to you early on, in the middle here, I was try and do a little bit of, something to, to give you a chance to sip some water. And, um, so today a bit of a different one I played for you as the song earlier from the, from the intro. Few people I've asked about that song, so that, that song is called Gunblaster. It's by a band called The Cunninghams. They're from, Toronto. My hometown. And, uh, I want to tell the story 'cause it's a cool one. the bassist in that, in that band, who you hear obviously on that intro is a good friend of mine named Zack Weinberg. He's, uh, someone I went to uni with. We've known each other for many, many years. And of our big group of friends, he was the other one who kind of went into the beer world. So actually from very early on we'd always talked about starting our own thing. He was a great brewer. Doesn't brew much anymore, but very good brewer. Um, but he went on to found Toronto Brewing. Toronto Brewing is the largest homebrew supply store, or largest homebrew supplier in, definitely in, in the province of Ontario, I think in Canada as well. and, uh, and so we stayed in touch. And then when I was at Northern Monk, we, I was always quite keen to get some love for Canadian breweries. I actually reached out to Zach. And, he put us in touch with, with Chris and Bebo, who, who are from, from Third Moon and came over to Hop City. And then actually, uh, a year later we were looking for another Canadian brewery. And I spoke to Bebo and Chris and said, you know, I like this Messorem brewery, that, that was fairly early stage at that time. Really liked what they were doing. Uh, I think you said you haven't tried them as well. But incredible beers. And, so Chris and people were like, yeah, they're great. Bring them over. We brought them over. So it's a bit of a, you know, obviously those breweries, I'm not saying this because, those breweries are really good, and on their own merit they would, they would've done this anyway. But it is kind of a neat full circle moment to be doing a podcast where the intro song is by a friend of mine who has this link to ultimately UK and, and, and European craft beer, despite being in, in Toronto. So wanted to tell that story. Thanks Zack, for the song. Ready for round two. Okay. So now just shifting a little bit. That was a lot about, the decisions and, and, and, uh, and, and how you made those decisions that ultimately shaped the story. Here's a little bit about opinions. So how would you define what is and isn't a craft brewery? I don't, I don't, I, I don't. Okay. Yeah. I, I, that's perfectly fine. Yeah. But it's, it's, it's, I mean, it's a term that we've never applied to ourselves. Okay. Although, you know, I mean, I don't, I don't necessarily object to it being thrown about there as a term because, it kind of means something. Sure. But I think when you get down to the nitty gritty of it, it's, it's not, it's not something. I mean, if you ask me, it would be just to do with how a brewery approaches their work. But how do you define that is okay, entirely nebulous. Yeah. I, I, I realize I threw through, threw a hard one. I don't think fine. There is an answer to that question. no. Um, so yeah, if you were asking me, I could probably draw lines, but then that would just be me, kind of, you know, you're on that side. You're on that side, okay. But then there'll be half, there'd be loads of people right in the middle, you know? Uh, and I, yeah, it's. I'm not gonna put you on the spot. No, it's um, oh, it was, no, I'm not gonna name any names. Of course. No, of course. I don't think I could anyway. It's, um, but yeah, and there's another question as to whether that is, why do we need to define it or what purpose does it serve? I think it used to serve as shorthand for something that stood for, whatever, not macro produced. Big corporation, beer, but all those, all that has been so muddied considering what's happened in beer in the last 20 years that it's, it's kind of that, is that the question? You know? Yeah. Is quality, the question is independence the question I, I dunno. I'm not, like they're all in there and they're all kind of intertwined in certain ways. and pretty hard to separate. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well that, that's a good segue.'cause I think, one of the things when we sat down in the tap room, I guess it was a little while ago now, three, four months ago, but, um, we talked a lot about the industry. So what's the state of, of like modern, craft beer? What's the state of it today? What did, what did we get wrong? What's gone Right? Like pretty high level stuff. Pretty broad question. But, uh, but yeah, what's your view on, on, on the industry and where it's got to? I dunno. I, I, like I mentioned before, I don't have a great idea of how other people perceive us and also that blindness works the other way. I, I don't, I, I can't visualize the industry as a, as a whole Okay. So, and, and much less understand how other people see it. so the question of how I see it. Which again might be different from Sure What, what is actually happening or how other people see it. there's a bit of melancholia I suppose, around, shall we use the word Craft Beer? Like, so, especially here in South London, we used to have, you know, nine, 10 brewing neighbours along, in Bermondsey. There's three there now. The rest of South London, it's been decimated. So you Meantime's closed. Fourpure is closed. Brixton's closed. They, they're, breweries are disappearing. still maybe a slightly stronger in North London, uh, at this current point in time. So those breweries are disappearing and the ones that are still there, a lot of people put a lot of love into a lot of breweries that then got taken over and there's just a bit of depression that somebody cared so much about a certain brand to devote their love, attention, money, whatever, into enjoying their beer. And then that thing got sold. So that loyalty and love was turned into money by somebody who sold their business, went on to do other things. Uh, and that's left just this residue of disappointment. Which, you know, it's like some people don't, won't be able to care as much about our beer because they cared about whatever, a Beavertown beer that used to mean something to them and now it doesn't. So the meaning has been kind of, As in they then, like fool me once, you got burnt. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And that, that feeling pervades a little. Do you feel that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But then I feel that I'm not saying that, Yeah. Yeah. other people do. Yeah. It's about you. I'm, I'm in a specific, yeah. I'm in a, it affects me personally. Sure. Um, yeah. And makes our life as a small brewery harder. Um. Because, all we want to do is make people care about good beer. Yeah. But if you used to care and you got burned, it's like, well, should I care anymore or will I just go drink whatever everybody else is drinking?'cause the last time I cared, all it did was make somebody else rich. There you go. Yeah. What do you,'cause that, I think when you say that, and this is again my interpretation. yeah. And um, and, uh, well obviously we've had very different experiences in the, in the beer world, but I, but I, do think probably more similar to you than, than people might think on the surface. When you say that, the thing that comes to mind is, is that we're talking about, I guess first and foremost people that are pretty entrenched in the craft beer community. There's also just local community I know, because obviously that's a, that's an important thing not to all breweries, but, but to a lot of breweries. But like, there is the argument that, that by someone, uh, for instance, I mean, let's just take Beavertown as an example. You know, by, by that being in grocery across the country or in a lot of taps across the country, in, in, quite frankly in a lot of pubs that would never mm-hmm. really have had craft. That's an introduction into craft, and that's the first step into it. I, I'll be honest, I'm not, I, I used to believe that. I'm not so sure I believe it anymore, but I, but I, there is an element, of course, nothing so black and white that it's yes or no. There is definitely, that is the case, but, do you, do you think there's substance to that or is that, is that just kind of something people say to make themselves feel better about? Mm, yeah. I kind of feel the latter. Okay. Yeah. But at the same time, there is. It does materially improve things. In what sense? Well, if you go into a bar, and you have an option. Yeah, you have an option. And, I, they're, they're not bad. Yeah. You know, you know, a pint of Neck Oil is, is, you know, it's not, it's not a bad beer. Yeah. So you, it does materially improve, the choice. Okay. Um. Ideally we'd improve that choice with other things. I mean, I, there's a lot of things we'd like to fix about economic systems in the world. Yes. We're here in the utopic studio. Yeah. Okay. I can dream. But the other bit of, the other sort of brewing industry, melancholia is just every, the only stories I see in the papers are usually about BrewDog and how in trouble they are. Or you know, poor cul, company culture. Now it's a financial thing, or the investment or when who's, you know, coming back to bite them in the ass or whatever. The one that was one last week about their sales Yeah. only grew by 1% last year. Yeah. And therefore they are in, you know, it's a bit of a mess, and then Martin Dickie's left and, Yeah. There's, you know, anyway, so, but that just, that's, that's what, that's all I see about beer in the world is negative stories about BrewDog. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's, um, that's sad. Yeah. You know. It is true. The narrative is not in a good place right now, that's for sure. Um, I do hope that evolves and I think it will. I mean, everything goes through cycles and I think, one of the things is when everything's good as it was for a while, um, it's normal, like journalism operates in extremes, doesn't it? Um, and so it's normal that when you have a something to compare it to, oh, it was good. Now you're bad. Like, let's talk about that. But you can't, saying you're bad for doesn't last for years. Like at some point the narrative's gonna have to change or people stop talking about it, and the industry kind of comes back. But I, I totally agree with you. I, it's, I find it incredibly frustrating that we don't hear some of the great stories. You mentioned some of the folks, that have come through, The Kernel and started their own things. And there's some amazing stories in there, that we just don't hear enough about right now, unfortunately. But, but hopefully that changes. Yeah. Um. Scale of 1 to 10, 1 being I guess not good, 10 being amazing quality of beer in the UK right now? Hmm. I don't have to try too hard to find like, seven and a half, eight outta 10 beers. Okay. I don't know if they are, but I mean, I'm, I'm already self-selecting where I go, but I don't find it too difficult. Okay. So I think the level's pretty high. Yeah. Um, certainly some of the, again, 15, 16 years ago when we started, I really struggled to find good beer. Yeah. I mean, maybe also I didn't know where to look. Now I know where to look. Well, there's also more options of where to look. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, a little bit. There's people like, you know, like tap rooms that you talked about visiting recently that, you know, you can go straight to source in so many places and you know, that's usually a good place to start. But, you know, even in our local corner stores near where I live, you know, you can walk in and have, you know, there might be eight local London breweries represented. Most of them making pretty good beer. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. if you went back and you did the whole journey again of what you know now, what, if anything, would you do differently? I don't, yeah. I don't, I don't think I would necessarily change, that's a good answer, much actually. I mean, I could ask myself to be more prepared for like, COVID, but I, I don't know how you could have prepared for that. Yeah. That did change things, I think, and, and not that it affected things that happened before, but certain decisions that happened before, if you had known something like COVID was coming along, you might have changed how you thought, but that's, yeah. That was never gonna be, yeah, something that any of us could have foreseen for sure. Um, but I don't, no, I don't, not on a major level in terms of decisions. I don't, I don't feel. I could have learned more about cask brewing. Okay. That's still something we're learning now. Um, 'cause it has a lot of meaning, obviously within British drinking culture. Yeah. And it's something that we've been kind of outside of mostly. We do a little bit of cask beer now. Okay. It's, it's not, you know. That, that's, that's a tradition that, yeah, I don't feel we've given quite enough respect to. Or understanding so that maybe, maybe focusing on, on those sort of traditions might have been something we could have done earlier. But it's, you know, it's not a. The, the, the other question then, in a similar vein, I guess. But if you then go the opposite way and we say like, 10, 20 years from now you, you know, what is what, what is, what is, how would. How would you define success? Like what does The Kernel look like for, for, for, for you to feel like this has been, this has been successful. This is what we wanted to do. What, in 10 or 20 years? Yeah. Like if you were, you're sitting somewhere and you're like thinking about, yeah, we did it. This is, this is great. This is what I intend. Well, not I intended, but this is what we wanted it to be. I don't know. I, I. I have moments of feeling that currently. Okay. So it doesn't have to look much different. Just keep rolling. Yeah. I mean there's obviously lots of things to tidy up and Sure. Smoothen out and clean and, and yeah. There, there is, I mean, things could also be quite different in 10, 20 years, I dunno. But it's, it's, I don't, don't think it needs to be too much different than it, than it is now. Maybe I could be doing less day-to-day stuff. Okay. Not have to be. Yeah. But that's a, any small business, it's pretty common. Yeah. Small business owner, you're stuck in every single, I think I've talk to anyone who doesn't say that. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. That's good. I mean, obviously you don't hear that from too many people. Um. And I think if you kind of take this, this discussion full circle with like, you start off very principled about what, who you were and who you are, and not just you, but but the brewery itself and the people around you. And, and to be then in a position where you go, yeah, like this, you know, making that connection to be able to look at it now and say, that is success, right. Especially over the absolute roller coaster for the industry as a whole over the last 20 years is a pretty, uh, amazing thing to be, have been able to done in a huge, huge success story. I, the last thing we do is typically a, a rapid fire questions, but as we discussed before mm-hmm. You're not a rapid fire kind of guy you said. You don't want to, so we're gonna do a bit of a, an audible here. You are gonna ask me the questions. Brilliant. And then, and then we'll, we'll wrap it up. Cool. I'll hand over the question so you, so you at least have, have that. Okay. Luca name a brewery that excites you today. I, I already, it's already hard for me as well. I, I always tell people you have like one word or one sentence and now I'm already breaking it. Yeah, exactly. You, it's a whole paragraph. I've already started poorly, but like, I think, um, you mentioned one, uh, that oh, quite frankly, don't know much about, but James, at Ideal Day, I love. Like I, I follow them. I live in Italy now, so I've never even had one of their beers, to be really honest. but I just love the genuineness of, of it all. it reminds me, obviously a lot of what you're saying is this is who we are, this is what we want to be. It's very open, riding a bike to the, to the, little, little beer bash, uh, little summer beer bash. Not that like, all that kind of stuff. I love that. I also, I would throw like a brew like Track in there. I've spoken to to, to them a few times and I just love, again, similar to what you've said is like, you know, they've gotten to a place where despite all the, the, the craziness growing up, they're like, this is who we want to be. How do we just become really good at this? And I think if you look at their output over the last year, their events, their beer, their, you know, collaborations, it's just, everything's absolute fire. And, and, um, and I think part of that comes with being comfortable with who you are. So that I went way over One word, one sentence, but anyway, go for it. Last beer you drank? Uh, so that would be, uh, a brewery called Alder. Um, the beer is called Rockfield, which is their kind of, their, their, I guess hero beer, if you will. But they're, uh, again, I live in Italy, so they're a brewery just north of Milan. Um, incredible brewery. Um, if you talk about, let's say, IPAs, not necessarily, they don't do very many hazy IPAs, but I would say more what they call American IPAs. Um, new age hops, um, and hop products and stuff like that. Incredible beers. Um, I absolutely you should check them out. Will do. Uh, one brand outside of beer that insp, has inspired you? Obey is one that I would say, which is the clothing brand. Um, only, I mean, if you look at my logo, it's inspired the Path logo. But I think in general, like, you know, when I started at like doing the advisory thing, I was like, I, the person who did my logo is actually the illustrator for Floc. So it was Ross that, that, um, that put us in touch, and so my one thing with everyone I work with was like, I don't want to act like an advisory. I want to act, like a, like something that's consumer facing, not B2B, for lack of a better word. And so I look at clothing companies a lot. You know, I've never, I don't have a website, but if I would, I would try and, you know, do it up like that. I'm breaking the rule on every single question. Go for it. Your rules, your questions. Uh, and one sentence you'd say to inspire others, looking to blaze their own path? I mean, I shouldn't be the one answering this question. But what I will do is I'll just try and if, if you, you allow me to, paraphrase a little bit what you said, which, and maybe what I said a little bit about like the Track example. But like, I think, you know, if you're comfortable with who you are and what you want to be and you're building something to that, as opposed to just following a, this comes next, this comes next. You know, then, then because, there's no, there's no such thing as success. Success doesn't have a de, definition. You define what success means for you. And I think that's what you did. And that's why you can sit here and say, yeah, I'm happy. We're success, right? Like, you didn't say success, but that's what it translates to. And, and so, so just define what your success is and be true to, to, to, that. It can evolve, but be true to, it. Broke a rule on every single one of those. But, um. Did that, that was, that was a nice summary. That was a nice, did I paraphrase all right. I mean, uh, even better. Appreciate it, man. I wouldn't have said it that way. So that's it. Uh, I mean, obviously first and foremost, Evin, thanks so much for doing this. Um, I really appreciate it. I think, you know, obviously there's a lot of people that, that are inspired by The Kernel and, and yourself and the team and, and the journey you've been on. But yeah, there's a lot of nuggets in there that I think people are gonna come away with, and will act as inspiration. Cool. On the back of this. Um, so do, yeah. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. Um, wrap up. The last thing I'll say is this is, uh, episode number three. What we're gonna do after this is take a break for the holidays. We're gonna come back in the new year. That being said, in between then we're gonna do the bonus episode with Sellar. Uh, the one thing I always say about Sellar is, you know, a lot of people know who Sellar are. Because a lot of people use Sellar, but I don't think enough people really know about Sellar. So we're gonna do this kind of style. A lot of, get in the head questions, not easy questions as, as you can attest to, and, and do a, a thing with them, which is great. With, with Matt and Julian, two of the founders here, both, great people. Um, so that's gonna drop in between. And then we're gonna come back in January, with, uh, episode number four, and that's gonna be with Bruce Gray. Bruce, interesting story, of course, from professional golfer to working in a BrewDog bar to then basically well being in charge of the rollout of BrewDog bars. I think he did the first 10, if I'm not mistaken. Then owning a whole, co-owning a wholesaler, founding a wholesaler. And then eventually making the way to, to alongside a few others, opening Left-Handed Giant, which is obviously an incredible brewery, but, um, but they also have a hospitality arm that not a lot of people know about because they're not called, other than the, the, the main taproom. I had the pleasure of having a few beers with, with Bruce, uh, in The Kernel Tap room just a couple months ago, uh, so I'm looking forward to that episode. And by the way, The Kernel taproom, what an amazing space. Congratulations on that. Thank you. Thank you. And that's it. Leave it at that. We good. Awesome. Good. Thank you so much and thanks everyone for, for tuning in, uh, listening and, uh, or, or, or viewing it. And, uh, said we'll be back, uh, with that bonus episode and then, uh, episode four in the new year.