EP 06 // Paul Jones // Cloudwater

Excellent, controversial and everything in between…

However, what is undeniable is that Cloudwater have played a massive role in putting UK modern beer on the map…and inspired many others along the way.

And who better than the always candid, passionate Paul Jones, Founder of Cloudwater & a true PATH Maker, to tell us all about this roller coaster of a journey.

And a special thanks to the team at Sellar for making PATH Makers come to life - https://www.sellar.io/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:14

All right, welcome everyone. Welcome back to Pathmakers Podcast. This is episode six, and I'm very happy, very pleased today to have with us Mr. Paul Jones. Paul Jones, the founder of Cloudwater Brew. Thanks so much for coming in.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Pleasure. Yeah, thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

I want to, by this point, I think everyone's kind of knows the drill, but one of the things I would say just to start off is this is slightly different than a typical podcast, in that we're not necessarily going to go through the journey. We're going to talk through more about the how and why you did it as opposed to what you did. With that in mind, what I do at the beginning of each one is I try and give at least a couple of resources that people can go into. So if they listen to this and they go, hey, I want to learn more about Paul, about Cloudwater, or they want to do that now and then listen to the podcast after. So I obviously did a lot of research before doing this. I mean, I used to work uh a couple of hours away, obviously, so I know Cloudwater quite well. Um, but um but I thought two things that stood out for me, uh both a little bit older, actually, but there's uh a great uh Good Beer Hunting podcast with Johnny Garrett, um uh episode 266, I think it's called uh Signifiers or uh something of that nature, but you can go check that one out. And then there was an article again from very early days uh called Humulone for the Soul. That was by Matt Curtis, and that was in Goodbeer Hunting as well. Is there anything else that you comes to mind?

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Well, there's been all sorts over the years. Uh we don't actually do a great job of keeping track of all of the media that we end up in, but uh certainly I think we pr blogged pretty extensively at the beginning. Okay. You'll find a whole load of interviews. I did look at a bunch of those in YouTube if you do that. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Okay, cool. Um, so we all get started. Before we get in, I want to just tell like a slight story. So I obviously I moved to the UK. I'm not from the UK, I moved to the UK in 20 early 2017. Um and I was uh running around trying to find an apartment in London, and I ended up finding an apartment um and it happened to be above a pub, and I and I was very happy about that because being a Canadian, I'm like, this is so quintessential British, right? I live above a pub. Um, but I I didn't look at the pub before getting the place, and then I got in the place and I went downstairs, and the pub is called the Earl of Essex, it's actually owned by um Grace Linds, Andreas, and and and um and Anselm. And uh I went down there and the first beer that I had in the UK in that pub from the GM at the time, his name was Jay, was Cloudwater. Um, and definitely in my early days in the UK, and I'm sure whether it was someone who moved here or lived in the UK, getting into good beer, Cloudwater played a huge role. So it's an absolute pleasure and kind of a nice little thing to almost 10 years later be sitting here with you chatting Cloudwater. So um to kick off, um, the first thing I wanted to talk about is uh what I categorize as conviction. So, like I think when you look at the the people that a lot of the people that I've spoken to on the podcast, uh, you know, I'm calling it pathmakers, people that I've created um uh helped shape the beer world as it is today in the UK. Um, a lot of them didn't set out to be pathmakers. And that's quite common, I think, in UK brewing where it's like scrounge together this, you start off, and it's like piece by piece, and all of a sudden, because of consistency longevity, you someone looks at you and goes, You're you're you're a pathmaker, you're someone that's as has helped uh create the industry as it is today. Um, with Cloudwater, it did feel a little bit different. And you're reading a lot about it. I mean, you went in with what seemed like a conviction that you wanted to be a path maker, that you wanted Cloudwater to be that. Is that fair?

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Yeah, I think that there are a lot of folk, I don't know whether it's their personality type or whether they are playing the role that they think they need to play within the UK business context. Kraft Beer was very apologetic about being professional, about being progressive. Uh, you know, when we opened up, it was very unusual to have a modern brew house, and and even that was critiqued. So I think the kind of backdrop for a lot of folk was come cap in hand, be meek, wind your neck in. Yeah. Um, and you know, for us, I I don't think we necessarily knew where we'd get to, but we knew that we were not gonna leave much on the table. We knew that we wanted to explore, we knew that we wanted to search for something that was meaningful to us, and we did have a hunch that if we did that, probably there'd be a bunch of people that would be interested in what we were doing. So I don't really think that we set off in year one or even in preparation for that year one with a sense of where we were gonna be in year two or year three, but every time a door opened in front of us, we walked through it. Okay, and as and as time went by, we got used to that happening to some extent, almost not expecting to be welcomed into different environments and greater opportunities, but more um, I think kind of accepting that that was happening to us. It did feel really weird in the beginning, you know, and we did, and we did play also that role of trying to be a bit smaller than we were in terms of our ambition. You know, you start a business and you pull a team together, and everybody's trying to live a good life, and life is always too short, and I think we always were on the hunt for something that felt like it was adding great value to us, keeping us busy with something that we really believed in. And I think when you know, when opportunities started to come through, um, yeah, it did feel weird to back ourselves, it felt weird to believe that we were worthy of anything. Um, but over time you kind of drop that story because that's not really that wasn't that wasn't my story, and it wasn't the story of us, that was more like the the script that we were handed to read. Um, and over time I think we felt more comfortable setting aside the script that others had given to us and just coming back to what was really true for us. So I think that's um that perhaps did set us apart because we knew that the business was going to evolve very, very quickly from being open. Uh, we knew that we were gonna look for opportunities to be as not not as big in terms of volume, but in turn as big in terms of excitement and fulfillment as we possibly could. You know, Cloudwater's not really changed in size in 10 years. We've never made more beer than the kernel any production year, but 80% of the collaborations that have been made with a UK brewery have been made with me. So we've had a massive presence on the global beer scene, we've really helped put the UK and its modernity on the map, and so in that respect, you know, the company feels ginormous. Yeah, yeah. Um, but we're still just a small group of people uh trying to make something good of our lives, you know, and then that's still the drive.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

It's funny you should say that because it is it is absolutely true that um I think if you were to ask a bunch of people what size is Cloudwater, everyone would assume too high. I mean me and me included, I know the industry, I knew the industry quite well. Like I I um but you mentioned there like the the script you were given versus this the the the reality of who you are. So who who was who was really cloudwater?

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Uh well yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean, I guess we still ask that today. We're still trying to figure out you know what is it that what is it about what we do that we that we really really love and that we wouldn't want to miss a a bit of. Cloudwater um I think was one of the first breweries in the country to genuinely love and respect the consumer as part of the industry. We walked into an environment, and I certainly walked into an environment where most of my peers, business owners, most of my peers, senior brewers, had the mindset that the consumer's job was to follow the leader, and the leader was the brewer. And in in the context of the company, the brewer was also in the driving seat, and it was everyone's job to kind of tow the line. We didn't like that dynamic. To me, that never felt rational. Um, it felt uh like it was probably of a time where people needed to be educated in beer styles and they needed an expert to lead and do that. But the context we walked into was quite a well-developed marketplace. People knew a lot of different beer styles, they knew a fair bit about the production process, they knew that they were interested in drinking local, drinking seasonal, drinking fresh. So for me, I I looked at the consumer base and I thought, you you you are us, and we are you. We are not different. You are not below us, uh, we're not below you. Let's have a very even-handed relationship. So our goals were all centered on exciting the consumer base, listening to what they needed, and always we've worked in the overlap between what we're really good at and what the consumers really wanted us to do. And I think that was an entirely different experience. You could probably still interview people today, I'd argue, 16, 17 years after craft beers kick off in the UK, and you'll still find a lot of people who are insistent that the job of the consumer is to drink what the brewers made for them and say thanks afterwards. Okay. I I I firmly disagree with that. I think that the beautiful thing of being a small-scale manufacturer like Cloudwater is we can literally, as I did last night, serve a customer over the bar, hear what they've got to say about what we're doing, and feed that right back into production conversation today. Uh the feedback loop is short, it's as short as we want it to be. And I think that's something that we've always really, really, really concentrated on. Um we got a lot of flack for that in the early days because I think a lot of folk wanted this dynamic of the powerful in control and in the lead brewer to persist. I think in some cases that still does, and that's fine, but it's not who we are. We are we're listening, we're paying attention, and we really respect the consumer's experience, and we want them to be in dialogue with us. And when they say they really love a thing, we want to hear that and we want to act upon that, and we'll still put all of our uh smarts and intuition and experiences into that mix too. But it's it's working in that overlap that I think was a complete scene change, and we demonstrated that that could be something that could not just build, you know, a brand that was gimmicky. I don't think Cloudwater's ever been gimmicky. I think we've built a brand that's genuine, honest, it's really who we are. We do care about people, and I think we demonstrated that that wasn't going to be the threat that a lot of the old school mindset thought it would be. And I'd like to I'd like to to sort of say I think the UK is in a much better shape um as an industry now because that has become an additional norm to how businesses can operate in the sector.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

And and so from the beginning, then outside of that I guess uh focus on the consumer versus maybe focus on yourselves. Um what else did the goal look like from the start? So, what I mean is I'm not saying you had something painted on a wall, but like what you know, when you started, there would have been some kind of goal. What was that for Cloudwater?

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Yeah, that that was absolutely crystal clear. So we had a lot of experiences um of being elsewhere in the world, uh as beer geeks ourselves, as beer consumers, and really feeling a little bit sad that the modern world of beer wasn't recognised within the context of the British tradition. Now, I'm really proud of the fact that the UK has been as influential as it has in helping seed ideas and seed styles and kind of inspiration in the wider world of craft beer. If you speak to most brewers in America, it's at the older set of pretty much all got a pint in the pub in the UK as the start of their journey. I love that, but we would travel for pleasure, we'd travel for beer, and we'd find only kind of old school brands. Um, so the traditional beers that this country should still be very proud of. Those were the only beers that were representing the UK in those export markets, and I felt upset. Um, I almost took it personally, I guess, that all of this wonderful modern work that was inspiring me wasn't visible. So we wanted to change uh visibility, we wanted the UK's modernity to be recognized alongside our tradition because we knew that there were some really cool things happening. We knew that we were toe-to-toe in some cases with some of the best of the rest in the world, and I wanted to make sure that Cloudwater played its part in changing what people thought of the UK, and we've absolutely delivered that.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

Um, you mentioned at the very beginning there about this, you know, coming in and maybe having a bit of a different perspective, different conviction, different attitude than what a lot of the brewing world looked like. And I think it's it definitely um you definitely feel that, right? Like you, you, you and I think there's there's an element of that is so crucial. Anytime you want to make a difference and you want to do something differently, you're obviously gonna piss some people off in the in in the in the route to do that. And that's that's what change is, and some people don't like change. But obviously that does create a friction in a in an industry that is, as you said, sensitive, it's very people focused. Like it sounds like you were very conscious of that, but like did that bother you? How did that play on you as how you were viewed within the rest of the bureau world?

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Crushing, okay, yeah, debilitating, absolutely. Uh on a personal level, it was difficult to stand. But we saw that we were opening the gates, we saw that we were opening massive new uh style categories. I mean, we did almost all of the uh you know dealings with hazy's not you know some corner cutting mess. Uh hazy beers can be produced to the same exacting specifications as the lager, and they were. So we we kind of you know we went against a lot of headwinds, but it always felt worthwhile because I've always been looking at the bigger picture. I could have done what a bunch of my peers did and lived life in the shadow, waited for someone else to cut the wind and just tucked in behind them. Uh it's not my style. Um, you know, if there's progress to be made, I don't mind digging in and rolling my sleeves up and getting involved. Um I think some of the some of the way in which people have tried to make progress in the industry has been far too oppositional and nowhere near enough uh focused on the real opportunity to develop an ecosystem, a community. And you know, after a after a while, you know, my growth as an individual within my business and also within the industry required me to take many, many steps back from the people that were consistently wrong, but always angry about something. Uh you're you're right to say, you know, progress requires the past to be some kind of wrong. Um, so there's something missing, there's something that you're doing that wasn't being done before. And yeah, that did ruffle feathers because I think for a while folk had gotten used to a kind of rule book, a hymn sheet, and we were threatening elements of that, not because we just wanted to ruffle feathers, but more because we could see change coming from progressive beer scenes elsewhere on the planet. We looked a lot to what was happening in the States, and it's a very different marketplace. You cannot reproduce the business model, but you can reproduce a lot of the impact to the consumer, and so you know, we felt we felt like we were on the right path, in touch with reality, in touch with unfolding changes of taste in the consumer. And again, I think what really stood out to me is I probably spent the first four years of Cloudwater religiously being told how wrong I was by um all manner of different folk in the industry, people that were buying a lot of beer from me, uh, people that never would drink one of my beers but loved to show up in any kind of forum to throw a little bit of um uh niggling questions or worse, you know, horrible insults our way. But I kept my view very, very squarely on the consumer because that's who matters, that's that is who matters the most. And so I got very used to accepting the fact that I was gonna get all manner of criticism from the trade and criticism from the industry because they weren't looking at at the same thing I was looking at.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

Okay, I was looking at the customer to slightly shift gears, but I think we're you know uh a good segue into it. So I want to talk a little bit about quality because obviously I don't think you can talk about cloud water without talking hugely about quality. So in the in that article by Matt Curtis, uh, which I think is from 2016, so that is a long time ago. But there was there's a a quote in here which I thought was was um was encapsulates a lot of this. So you said uh in there it says we don't suffer from a loyalty to Manchester that would that could see us stop pushing once we're making the best beer in town, yeah. Nor do we suffer from only wanting to match or surpass efforts in London or elsewhere in the UK because our loyalty lies with quality. And I think that encapsulates a lot because obviously it it it it I think it shows the ambition. Um and to really make a difference in quality, you kind of have to have that mindset. You gotta it's gotta be your North Star. It also encapsulates friction, right? Like I think that as a as a quote is something that a lot of people, a lot of people in this industry in the UK would would never say, even if, as you say, even if they felt it. Um but the thing is, you know, like you said, you guys backed it up, right? And and I think you know, it's one thing if you're gonna if you're say those things, but it's clear you truly believe them. Because if you look at, you mentioned, you know, trying to trying to bring UK modern beer in the UK or UK in general on the global stage. I know I can't remember the exact year, but you guys were ranked fifth on uh fifth top brewery in the world and rape beer, back when rape beer was a thing. Um you uh I when I wrote these articles, uh I mentioned to you two years ago, um, I did a lot of really um painful research. And one of the things I did is I went through um the breweries and the percentage of number one beers they have in untapped categories. And you guys have 31 categories where you have the number one beer. Um that is by far the most, right? So it talks about not just the quality, but as you say, the diversity across styles. I think if I'm not mistaken, the second was like way less than half of that. Yeah, so it's considerably um obviously friends and family. I think you know, in terms of bringing breweries over, top quality breweries, the lineup at that time was, you know, bar none was was was up there. Um so you really there's there's absolutely no doubt, no matter what anyone's opinion is on Cloudwater has been in the past, there's no doubt that Cloudwater has um has has really helped push what good beer can mean in the UK and and beyond, right? How did you do that?

SPEAKER_00 19:53

Um, I mean, we didn't repeat the mistakes that some of our peers made. So, you know, back in the very, very early days of hazy beer starting to appear or less than pinbright beer appearing, it wouldn't be uncommon for you to get a 330 mil packaged item that had up to 90 mil of trubby, wispy nonsense in it. I used to buy those products and drink the uh the 260mm that was clean and leave that swimming trub. And I was like, this is a terrible experience and bad value for money. So we didn't repeat that. We we up we applied all of the brewing science that was available to us at the time, finings, proper cooling all the way throughout, and these were some of the issues that weren't being adequately dealt with elsewhere. Um, we started to centrifuge all of our beer, and indeed we've controlled yeast and that type of solids in package since 2017. Every single product, doesn't matter how hazy it is, has always had yeast controlled via that method and temperature and time since then. Um you're right to say I think we are uh we produce more styles than any other brewery in Europe each year. Um, and part of doing that is you know, we like to try and nail a classic before we permit ourselves to play within that space. Okay. So we make an honest and true to style Saison before we do something with Saison as a foundation. We make a pure and simple wheat beer before we do something with that, etc. etc. So we've used measuring ourselves against the best classics out there as a tool over all of these years to hold quality standards up. Every single time we went away to the States where I could get hold of whether it's something from these guys, some of the best West Coast and Imperial IPAs on planet Earth, or a four pack of hazy cans, or several suitcases worth of beer. You know, we'd always do A B testing. We'd always do that to try and give ourselves a realistic view. View, we do the same kind of sensory analysis that other breweries do, but we do not do the triangle test under blue light for consistency. I don't care about that. We mark for impact. And we do that with impact mean? Impact is whether we're doing our job properly or not. And what is that? How do you define that? Uh so if we're making a hoppy beer, it it doesn't matter how the quality of those ingredients. It doesn't matter how happy we are with our recipe and our process. It literally just matters whether the person drinking that pale or IPA or double IPA thinks that their experience is at least as good as the previous drink that they had and the next one that they're gonna have. So it's a difficult system, which is why not many people use it. But we measure ourselves in terms of the success we think our products are going to have in a pub because that's where beer's consumed. Uh, or in a lineup of cans at a bottle share or a product share at home or just somebody's nine. So we have our own system for making sure that we've always held ourselves up to the best that we can possibly buy and consume ourselves. That's always been our framework. When we're really proud of the work that we do, you know, we get out into the field and we try and find something that's better than it. And we often do, by the way. Um, it might be better for small reasons rather than holistic reasons. Um, but we're really we we maintain that kind of self-critique, uh, that groundedness that doesn't let us get lost in being what we call a bit seller happy. You know, it's fun to make alcohol, um, it's easy to be very proud of that. If you leave a banana on your desk a week, that'll make alcohol. I don't think it's something to get overly proud of. I think it's more the decisions that you make that are for the people that are doing the purchasing and for the people that ultimately you're working for. And for us, that's the consumer. So impact is about thinking about that consumer journey, their night out, and how your beers fit in as highlights in that experience.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

So you you know, if you take, let's say that well, mid-teens to to to late teens, obviously, Cloudwater is going like this. Um in that time, I think it's fair to say that success, well, success always brings opportunity, but I think at that time in this industry, success uh brought, I would say, opportunity and a lot of pressure with it, in the sense that if you're a brewery that's doing well, people are willing to look at acquisitions, they're looking at investment, they're saying you can do more. If you're not, it's a little bit easier to just be who you are because because you won't you won't get some of those pressures. No doubt you would have had what pressures that you would have had those those um those things to consider or at least deal with, right? So and and while that was going on, it almost seems like you dug in further into the the narrative of quality, this is who Cloudwater is. I think that's where I started seeing a lot more about cold chain. I know you guys were putting carousels about hazy IPAs on Instagram, like very knowledge focused. And so, you know, why did you not get caught up in all that? Why I know I I believe, you know, we've had conversations before where some of those conversations were for sure brought to you, but like, why was that not right for you? Why were you like, no, I'm just gonna dig in, this is what cloud water is.

SPEAKER_00 25:21

I mean, we got I got offered a lot of money, 50 million pounds in 2017 for the company. Um, I don't meet that many happy rich people. Okay. Um, I don't think wealth is a path to satisfaction. I don't think it's a path of spiritual development, and those things are far more important to me uh than a scramble for wealth in the vain hope that that resolves your trauma or or your anxiety or basically sets you on a on a path of contentment. Uh I that's that's not for me. Okay. I'm an ancient wisdom guy. So uh, you know, folk busying themselves with becoming affluent through beer. There's a lot of folk that have done that with great circumstances and not had to dilute their ownership. Uh, Cloudwater is still fully and wholly owned by me all these years later. It does come with its pressure. It would have been nice to share some of those tougher moments with a with a group of people and have you know a reliable um group of people to talk to by way of a board or an ownership structure. So, yeah, there's definitely been times where I felt um overburdened by a responsibility for the business and its reputation and its team. Um, but ultimately I'm really, really glad we've kept our independence. I don't think that independence is uh the only way that you can make a positive impact in the world. I think there are people out there that are demonstrating that careful um careful growth by other means um can also be interesting. But I mean we're surrounded by folk that have taken uh you know a bite of the apple um and haven't found that journey particularly smooth, and I don't know whether they'll really get what they want out of it ultimately. Again, for me, I'm I'm not trying to be here for a minute and go on the next. I'm trying to make this not just my lifelong job, but hopefully the lifelong job of all the folk that want to be with us for part or all of that journey. Um, Cloudwater will probably become an employee-owned company if things work out the way that they need to to make that happen. Uh, you know, there's obviously lots of difficulty in the market right now, so I'd hope that none of that difficulty forces us down a different path. But that's been my ambition, and I've been on record saying that for at least five years already. We want to make that happen. We have to stabilize the business a little bit more and make sure that it's as robust and clear and strategically thought out as it possibly can be, better performing financially than it is. And I think that's also part of what's tricky. Cloudwater's success in making great beer, in being a well-known brand, in being a professional brand, in being well known in the wider scene, those are things that you would usually assume go hand in hand with us making great profit and being very, very financially robust. And I think one of the challenging things for folk to accept is we led the way in uh remuneration. We I was paying uh junior staff on the production floor more than some head brewers were making in London when we opened up, um, and and we still are uh you know towards the front of the pack in terms of remuneration. That's always meant that Cloudwater is a very expensive company to run, far more expensive than a lot of our peers. We also came through in a time where automation in the brew house was absolutely no-go, so we didn't go there. Um, we put quite a manual system in that's quite labour-intensive. So our cost base is far higher than a lot of our peers. I think if we get the chance to refresh our brewery, we will probably look to make things a little bit more efficient now, that that's become a bit more accepted. Um, it took me a while to reconcile the fact that the industry wasn't particularly logical in that respect. You know, for folk weren't necessarily looking for efficient and well-run factories that were competitive to our continental peers. It was more, you know, let's let's let's sweat our way through the prew day, and that's how you do it, honestly. But look, I think um, you know, it's it's obvious that there are lots of different reasons why other people have approached being in beer. For me, it's because I genuinely love the social aspects of the industry, I love the way in which we get to work together with a lot of other businesses. So, look, you know, um I want to keep those things that I really believe in alive. I want to be in control of not having to go down a path that starts to threaten some of the things that we really, really believe in. And I think uh up until this point, you know, that path has been best for us as a soul, soul-owned, independent business. It's probably what a lot of the future looks like too, until we get to deliver that kind of employee ownership structure.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

So um, and and as you say, uh, I think to be honest, I I work with quite a lot of brews these days, and you know, what you described is a challenge that everyone's kind of trying to manage these days. Um, so yeah, no, I uh uh here's to here's to more in the future. Um the one thing then from an outsider's looking in, as is everything I'm saying, because I I've I was never in Cloudwater, um, but from an outside looking in, it did feel like around 2019 there was a bit of an evolution. So I think quality always has been and always probably will be the North Star, but it seemed like accessibility became more and more prominent. And accessibility, I think maybe is different things. One is okay, and I think it was 2019 you had the soda, yeah, right. Which I mean, talk about being ahead of your time if you look where we're um where the non-alic space is now. Um 2020 or 2021, you went into Tesco. Um along what I also mean with accessibility is um you know you started the the Wayfind Wayfinder, yeah. Wayfinder program. That obviously is uh one of the things that has come out of that. Obviously, from the start was um queer brewing, right? Um and you obviously championed minority-owned breweries both on the website and in in that Tesco launch as well, right? Um and and the Tesco stuff was also brewed at brewdog, right? So that why I say accessibility is there's a couple things there, but it it seems like there was a there was a couple of years there where there was a lot of focus on you know the consumer, but maybe a different consumer, not at not as hardcore consumer. Is that fair? Is that yeah, absolutely?

SPEAKER_00 32:09

Look, uh, you know, so several things, several things were happening in the run-up to that kind of as you say, evolution. We'd been brewing all of these one-off and seasonal beers for years, you know, making that charge into one-off beer space. And then over the years we were joined by more and more of sometimes the original set of naysayers. Um, you know, everybody expanded their offering towards more one-off and more variety. A bunch of folk that were maybe focused on one or two styles, you know, spread that out. And so the marketplace became really, really, really busy. And some of our customers were saying to me, Look, I can't keep up, it's stressful. Um, and I thought, well, how do we solve that? You know, maybe we we'd already made a lot of pale ale and we've always made a lot of lager over the years. Um, but we thought, you know, maybe if we settle down and actually adopt a core range or the semblance of that, um, that would start to make things a little bit uh less stressful for those people that we were trying to center and serve. And then, you know, talking about stress, you know, we'd been working uh to try and support uh breweries that didn't have the same opportunities that we felt like we had. Um, so uh Tesco and others had been knocking on our door for years. Never interesting, don't care about it. I I haven't used a supermarket in 25 years. I don't shop in them, I don't agree, I don't really agree with the way in which they do business. But the opportunity came around for us to put that four pack together and we managed to put a healthy five figures into the hands of those four breweries. We retained no profit from that um four pack, neither did Brewdog. That's why we that's in that's the only reason we did that uh offer into Tesco, and the only reason we put other products in is because we had to to make that four pack work. That was the deal, right? Um, so that was entirely an accessibility exercise, but it wasn't accessibility for us, it was so that consumers could walk into the beer aisle and see the word queer for the first time in a supermarket. It's so that black beer drinkers in this country could see a black-owned brewery uh visible to them and support, choose to support that business. That's really important stuff. I wanted to use our platform to help uh those businesses step up and take a bigger role in the industry. Um, so yeah, I mean we worked hard during the pandemic when everything was really tough and keeping your business was alive. I think we just hit the gas on what are all of the ways in which we can have the biggest possible impact to the widest number of people, and though a lot of those efforts were coming from that thought process. Okay. Terribly bad timing to do anything with brewdog, deeply regretful to extend trust. The business looked like it was going in a maturing direction. I had been saying to Martin and James for years, be more Sierra Nevada, grow up. You're the biggest brewery in Europe, you need to grandfather responsibly. And honestly, at the time when we signed up those agreements to produce uh that volume that we could never produce uh at home in my little brewery, you know, it really felt like they were starting to mature and they were starting to think about being more responsible. And of course, sadly, a couple of years later, that house of cards came crashing down and a lot of the skeletons that were in their closet came tumbling out, and we got badly, badly caught up in that. I really regret uh the pain that my team and businesses around us suffered as a result of that. It doesn't make me want to behave in a less trusting way, but certainly uh that was a really, really painful time and so frustrating because all we were trying to do is centre those four breweries in that four-pack. You know, Echo now have their tap room going in Peckham, Rock Leopard are just opening up in Thamesmead, queer Brewing have at their own brewery and tap room now. Um, sadly, you know, uh all that remains uh Steve's operation is uh a lovely brand called Curry Smugglers, so he's now making beer snacks instead of beer. Um you should go everyone should go and check out those four businesses. They're all really, really wonderful people that still need a lot of support and nurturing. But yeah, I mean it was uh I don't know, you take a risk in business, and most of the time you take a risk, it's just to feather your own nest. But we've taken risks time and time again for other people, and that is exactly why you will probably find, and listeners to this uh podcast will find folk that can't believe that we would take a risk for others because it's not the done thing, but we did.

SPEAKER_01 37:19

Most important question is are you are you happy with with Cloud, where Cloudwater is today?

SPEAKER_00 37:24

Do you know it's it would be difficult for me to not be thrilled? Um I think we've ticked off so many bucket list items. Uh again, we've we've been able to to exceed a lot of the expectations that we have we had in the beginning about where the the business could be and how we could establish ourselves the the ways in which we've been able to impact the broader image of of what the UK beer scene is. Many, many, many bucket list items ticked off. Small business life is really hard. Um, I feel like you have to have uh what I call sysophilia. Um so this love of repeating the same hard task forever. Okay. Um that's a little bit what I feel like you have to have to operate a small business. You fix the same problem thousands of times. Um, you know, you brace yourself for the same kind of impacts from the wider world of, you know, we we live in a lovely little bubble. I've described some of the ways in which it's it's a it's a it's a wonderful industry to be in where we get to share ideas and co-work with a lot of other businesses. We all pay our rent to a giant global corporation on land that's managed by our local council in a country that's governed by people that have got no idea we exist and how tough small business life is. So, you know, there are kind of the the edges are very clearly defined right now, and there's a lot of ways in which small business life is really hard. But you know, for what we could achieve in this time, for what we have achieved, um, yeah, warts and all, they are absolutely thrilled with it for sure.

SPEAKER_01 39:03

Brilliant. Well, I'm in Manchester tonight, so I can't wait to have a climate over here uh and support. Um, but no, I mean that's that's that's great to hear. I think uh at the end of the day, everyone's been on a journey, and there's gonna be elements of that journey. People go, this was great, this was this was less so, and especially over the last six years, five, six years. I mean, I can say from experience has just been it's been turbulent, right? And it's uh and you're you're trying to make the best decision. So I I totally get it. Um I do, I do. That being said, we'll shift to to operations, so it's operations to opinions. The long day with the flight over to Manchester. So this is we have touched on this a little bit, but um so I had to get a mortgage recently in Italy, uh, which is always difficult, but on top of the fact that I've only been in Italy for a year and a half, I have my own business. Basically, I don't exist. Most banks I went to are like zero. Um I finally got a bank to to agree with me, and then I they posed me the question, but I've seen that the UK uh beer industry is not doing so well. And obviously, I I prepared all this stuff and showed them and and whatnot. But I um but I I I give that context because I'm gonna put yourself in that situation. Right. Like you have to if someone says that to you, how do you answer? What what's it like?

SPEAKER_00 40:14

I think the UK beer industry is maturing fast. Um my part of the industry craft has obviously only really been in existence for 16, 17 years. We can argue well, you know, what the what the real start date is, but somewhere around that amount of time. We came out of passion, not professionalism. So we're learning to evolve our businesses. Uh, people within those businesses are learning to evolve their outlooks from just being very impassioned alone to also pulling in as much professionality as we possibly can. So I think there's a great moment of um reflection that's happened as a result of all the suffering throughout the pandemic and post-Brexit. I think that's caused a lot of businesses to say, hey, I don't know whether we've optimized, I don't know whether we've really hit a high point of sustainability. What do we do to make sure that we're not um uh less than perfectly efficient, um, that we're well managed, uh, that our people are really well looked after. So this kind of maturation period, I think, is a lot of what the future holds for UK craft beer. I think the industry is clearly perfectly serving the consumer. People up and down the country have got an enormous variety of really well-made product available to them. It's it's difficult to not find good craft beer in most settings these days. That's a great success story. How we take that forward as small businesses and how we make sure that the trade continues to regard and and prioritize craft beer within the context of import beer, of which there are there's an enormous amount in this country. How we make sure that we're an important part of people's lives local to us, you know, that's still a puzzle that uh that I think will be a live puzzle for the rest of all of our lives in the industry. But I'd say that I'd say that our industry is full of promise, it's definitely full of pain. Uh a small business life, anybody out there that runs a small business will be nodding when I say small business is full of pain right now and has been for some years. Um, so you know it's it would be wrong for me to not acknowledge that small pain also in this industry, but there's lots of opportunity there too. So I kind of feel as though it's easy to look back at the heady heydays pre-pandemic and want to return to those. I wouldn't return to those if you paid me. I'm really happy to be working through the challenges that we've got in a business that's becoming mature and professional, and knowing that that professionality is building robustness that hopefully serves us through thick and thin, and doesn't just require heyday uh to keep the lights on. So I think that a bunch of my peers are in the UK are also operating in a very savvy way. Some of our peers elsewhere in the world where they might have had phenomenal earning potential and and and phenomenal profit pre pandemic. Um, I think some folk elsewhere in the world have found accommodating the the the this period of craft beer more difficult. I think most of my peers in the UK are used to rolling their sleeves up and working. really hard. So I kind of feel like there's a gutsiness that's still very present. Sure, there's a bit of fatigue, a bit of stress, a bit of tension, but I think yeah, enormous promise. Yeah. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 44:12

I love that answer. If you if you had asked me that question, I think you that was exactly how it answered you just said it better than me. Um and you know what I I I I I one of the things that so when I because I when I basically my my business what I do now is is uh I'm an advisor to factors, right? And mostly in breweries I work a little bit in other bits as well. And it was funny because when I started doing it, I kind of expected in the environment we were in this was 20 started 2024, it was two years ago. In the environment we were in, I was expecting the people that were putting out fires to be like Luca, I need your help. The first two people that reached out to me were Vault City and Caravan and Coffee. Those businesses are doing well. Right. And I and it and it dawned on me because then you know then since then it's like two flints um another one that's doing quite well that I'm not going to talk about um but you know there's there's a handful of brews now and and I think part of it is there are some founders that are making that recognition saying look there's and it's tricky uh uh because I obviously come from my I started at ABMB and I made my way to where I really wanted to be and and I think there's a there's a tricky thing because I I was schooled in um what you called professional yeah professionalism right um but then I have a prof like I loved working with Brian at Northern Monk but someone who is you know I mean he'd say it himself something but like he's he's a creator he's a he's a personality he's he's so good at things that I'm not good at and vice versa. And there's a recognition now that there's different people that can do different things to help these businesses mature. And I see that firsthand and every time I look at a business what again what I tell everyone is I there's opportunity there's loads of opportunity. The tricky thing is managing that opportunity the right way because if you go in and say well you just need to cut cut these things that's not the right way to do it because then you lose who you are right so you gotta find that balance and every business is so different. But I love I love that answer.

SPEAKER_00 46:00

It almost feels like we we we uh we talked about that one but we didn't on a scale of one to ten one being uh not good and ten being the best um state of quality and you create UK craft beer from someone who I think knows quality as good as anyone um I'll say a pretty solid six and a half to seven okay um I think there's lots of opportunity uh for folks to continue to learn uh from breweries like us about how to improve quality in hazy beer improve quality in highly hopped beer you know hop bite was a mistake that we made in 2017 and 18 haven't really made it since uh yeast is not an uncontrolled factor in our beer and it's still abundant in a lot of products if you're a drinker listening to this I'm not trying to tell you what you should be enjoying if you're a brewer listening to this I am trying to say that you might have opportunity to further improve your product and put that product out into the market in a way that somebody can choose to drink you know several beers from you and not hit a stomachache the next day you know working with um low floculation yeast that's great for uh wonderful rich tropical flavours as a lot of us do in in hazy beer that requires a slightly different treatment protocol uh than the kind of days of old where finings and time and temperature were were enough um I I I also say six and a half to seven not because I'm trying to look down on anybody I think honestly for me that's close to the best that it can be you know that's the score you give to there's a big difference between the type of product quality that you can guarantee being outputted from your brewery and then the kind of market that that lands into and again please if you're a publican don't think I'm trying to have a dig but it's complicated and even though we might we all try and put beer out that's absolutely perfect it hits a seller and maybe is in there for a week or a month longer than it wanted to be you know it's complicated in the marketplace not everyone can guarantee the perfect pore perfect environment perfect glassware so I don't think a 10's possible by the way my ceiling might be closer to an eight okay um just because I think that perfection is something that you could probably only be the guy on untapped being like uh great beer best I've ever had 3.5 no probably not but more like if you want the if you want the most perfect beer experience you're gonna be in a seller of a brewery sure or you're gonna be in a brewery tap and I'm just saying that acknowledging that you know without those additional controls that you get to have as the producer you know the market itself has uh not compromised but it has uh complicated factors that mean that not every serve can be a perfect serve so you know I think we're in a great shape I still think this is by far the highest quality most innovative country uh for modern beer in the whole of Europe I think beyond Europe we're really punching above our weight yeah great we've got all of this tradition to rely on um but I think that we are absolutely up there with the best of the rest there's a bunch of America that if you could transplant some of our breweries and slap them down into cities that have you know all of the beer consumers that are available to folk out there we'd be going toe to toe with a bunch of folk in the States too so you know I think we are still absolutely at the forefront. I think we're still in a leadership position.

SPEAKER_01 49:52

Yeah tip top nice last bit rapid fire um so the concept of rapid fire is I'm gonna pose a question and the ask is for you to answer in either one word or one sentence.

SPEAKER_00 50:05

Sure we'll uh so first question name a brewery that excites you today Uchu nice yeah um I'll give a quick explanation for anyone that doesn't know about them um I I have lots of conversations with people all all around the world about you know how to move beer forward how to do something new and interesting uh Masahiro is one of the most inspiring people to talk to nothing is off limits for that guy um he is really really progressive he's he's pushing a country that's famous for perfecting everybody else's stuff into a new space and honestly I'm kind of terrified because Japan has proven that any technology or any craft that it gets involved in it will eventually boss I'm waiting to have my arse completely kicked by Uchu but also by other brewers in Japan that's in that's in their nature um so yeah Uchu I like that um last beer you drank it was V19 in my own tap room last night uh yep I met a friend and we had a couple of more casual beers and then we both had a third of uh V19. Is it on tonight? Yes it's delicious.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

Uh brilliant the cloudwater beer you're most proud of I know that's a hard question.

SPEAKER_00 51:29

Do you know what it's kind of it's probably gonna seem a little bit cliche uh to say it but uh back in April 2016 sorry this is a long sentence you've said one sentence it's all right it's all right 2016 we got invited to brew dog's AGM you know for obvious reasons I don't care about brew dog but it was the biggest beer event in the country 7,000 people that were absolutely in love with craft beer and I said to my team we are going to make the beer of the festival and and and of course everyone was like wow this guy is insane who who who are we to turn up with the show stopping beer but we did it v3 has to be the standout scene changing beer it changed a lot of people's exactly for the AGM yes that was I mean I've I've tried to look into what was like the first hazy beer in the in the UK I think that is if not the one it's definitely it's it's uh it's up there there were other small efforts bubbling away much smaller breweries very or intermittent offerings but that beer completely changed uh our expectations of what we needed to do next it it hit the mark with hundreds of drinkers at that event and we came home supercharged to do more of it amazing yeah cool story I didn't know that um best decision you ever made at Cloudwater um I think I've made a couple of unconventional hires I'm not going to go into the specifics because that's me and my business but um I think being a bit off piste not just in terms of like trying to solve uh problems but also trying to uncover opportunities I think this year we've brought a couple of people into the team that um are unconventional um to your to your average brewery and it's really really really changing um what we what we have in our sites uh what we're aware of um and I'm gonna add another thing from the distant past I think I've I worked in a lot of businesses before cloudwater where everything was really quite capitalist uh it was about creating value and wealth for the business owner and that was it cloudwater's always tried to be very very people centric we've described that uh you know over the course of the conversation how we've faced customers but I think striving to make a post-capitalist business work in the environment that we're in right now that still remains a cracking decision it's really hard I often employ people that uh do not believe in the kind of socialist principles I operate by I have to try and prove it to them it's it's hard work but I I think it's a really really important thing if you want your business to be other than just that typical capitalist model like go ahead and do it. And if you don't have that model right now and you want to try and pursue it and get to it give it a shot.

SPEAKER_01 54:25

You you know nothing to lose if I gave you the lamp and you could run the lamp and you could get a wish and fix one thing in the beer industry modern beer industry today what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 54:38

Um it would probably be um God that's a really tough you know now am I thinking about my own context of the business um I I would say yeah there is something that I would change I I think that we can do a better job of um celebrating the trailblazers if I think if I look at music music's my background before beer I think musicians do a great job of of holding up the people that that set out on a path before they did uh whether that's you know a jazz originator or it's a composer that created something new hundreds of years ago I think in beer oftentimes everyone wants to try and be their own island um successful by their own means and not necessarily always taking the time to pat people on the back for their efforts and especially in this point in time the industry's obviously um been in a stronger place in the States it's perhaps been slightly stronger in the UK albeit for reasons I've said not strength I'd like to return to but I think we can probably do a better job of patting those people on the back that made our livelihoods today possible. I think there's a lot of people out there craft can probably be that uniting force that gets rid of the dividing lines between microbrewery regional brewery traditional brewery family brewery craft brewery etc etc and I think bringing people together and acknowledging all those folk before us that made this beer world that we're in right now possible I think that's something that we kind of miss and we don't do enough of I'd like to see us do more. So my wish would be that everyone that's got someone that they look up to would reach out to that person publicly more often and kind of celebrate what they did. Um I think too often especially it's a bit of a UK culture thing we're just a bit stiff about that we're scared of celebrating somebody else um in in an overt way and I think it would be nicer if we did more of that.

SPEAKER_01 56:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 56:58

Uh last one uh one sentence you'd say to inspire others looking to create their own path um I'd say other people are not you okay that's a good one I get yeah um and if you search for that or if you search for other people are not me you'll probably find the origin of that quote uh I think it's really important to really keep reflecting on who you are as a business owner keep reflecting on what's valuable to you and uh follow your own path it's really easy I use the metaphor of the Peloton in cycling a lot when I talk about the beer industry you know we are in a pack we are in an industry we are um along on the same journey the same ride it's really important to acknowledge that community but also within that you've got your own drivers your own abilities your own hopes and dreams just be really in touch with that um there is not a shortcut the shortcut is always that you do more of that inner work to uncover what the real motivations are and that you use those motivations properly um but yeah just uh look inward more than outward I think that's how I could express that great well thank you so much uh really appreciate that I found it very uh uh very insightful but just entertaining and like nice to do so um that is that's it that's six episodes done uh I get to go back to my job now which is good uh thanks so much for taking the time busy um and uh and yeah so thanks everyone for for tuning in to all six episodes I hope you you've enjoyed it um and as I said I guess it's back back to work but before I do that I'm gonna go to the Cloudwater top room and have uh a a few beers so uh thanks everyone and uh who knows maybe see you down the road