Setting up a community brewery and pub
WHEN it comes to advice on setting up a community brewery and pub, most roads lead to the city of York, in England, where brewing and pub consultant, David Smith, calls home.
It was to Smith – and others, including nearby Heriot-Watt University, which boasts the world-renowned Institute of Brewing & Distilling – where Alistair Brown, now CEO of Edinburgh-based Bellfield Brewery – turned, when he was gripped by a desire to find a decent pint that didn’t spark rather horrible symptoms.
Diagnosed with coeliac disease seven years ago, he says “it became personal” – his ambition to produce a gluten-free beer that at least matched his previous favourite tipples, including the locally-brewed Deuchars IPA.
It has been a steady haul, producing a beer (you would call it a ‘craft beer’) that has always been about flavour first.
It helped that Brown was previously involved in large projects. Immediately before turning his hand to running a brewery full-time, he was, for ten years, chief technology officer at broadcaster, STV. So, he wasn’t daunted by the prospect of having to be methodical or pulling together a team.
The result is a brewery named after the Bellfield area of Edinburgh coastal town of Portobello, which would be best described as a ‘micro-brewery’, by virtue of the volume it now produces.
According to a paper on the subject, published by Sheffield Hallam University (here), a ‘micro-brewery’ is defined as “a small scale brewery operating under the UK Progressive Beer Duty threshold of 5,000 hectolitres [almost 900,000 pints] annually”.
Brewing is as much a science as an art, involving an understanding of, among other things, fermentation, sugars, proteins and grains. For the relatively uninitiated, it helps to at least know the difference between a keg and a cask.
Begins Smith: “A certain amount of technical knowledge is required, especially if the ambition is a flavour that has some commercial potential, which will be of a higher quality than the average home brew. It’s easy enough to learn, I’d say.”
But he cautions: “The first question for any prospective brewery is: How much beer is to be produced?
“And for a community pub, perhaps comprising a bunch of neighbours, it might not be that much. So, you first need a business plan. My experience is that many people start small and soon realise they want to do more, but then don’t have the space to do it.”
He continues: “Community-run breweries risk falling apart early on in their development, because they have not quite sorted out some key fundamentals: Who is it for? Who is going to do what job? Does anyone need paying?
“You need to establish ground rules: Are you aiming to develop a commercial operation? Is anyone expecting a salary? Is it essentially home brewing by a club of enthusiasts, which can be done from a table-top?”
So long as there is a sufficient supply of water and power (plus a means of disposing effluent), the brewing kit required can be as small as 3m x 3m.
Bellfield is a good deal larger, comprising over half a dozen, 2,000-litre shiny stainless steel tanks and associated piping.
For Bellfield Brewery, the market was always going to be bigger than the bar (or taproom) attached to the brewing room, since it is estimated that one in a hundred people have coeliac disease.
Currently, of course, it is shut down, as part of the lockdown response to the Coronavirus pandemic but the team are planning to open their beer garden at the end of this month and the taproom the following month (subject, of course, to Scottish Government guidance).
Both Brown and family friends each pitched in £10,000 to begin developing the idea, with some later financing coming through a crowdfunding campaign (£180,000) and private investors group, Equity Gap.
At the time, Brown was still at STV, meaning most evenings and weekends being devoted in pursuit of his perfect pint.
“We did some of our own recipe work – essentially home-brewing – with a friend, who was a local hobby brewer, and then a year-long research project with Heriot-Watt University.
“After about 18 months, we were happy and launched our IPA and Pilsner recipes in 2016. We were fortunate that we quickly gained some decent distribution, on the back of our story and also winning awards in – important for me – mainstream categories.”
You can imagine the time, but also the fun, involved in the research.
“You need to be prepared to do quite a lot of homework. We spoke to a lot of folk and found the brewing community, in general, really keen to offer advice and recommendations, which is how we heard about David Smith.
“In terms of investment, of course there is bespoke – but also quite expensive – equipment available, but there is also quite a healthy second-hand market, as people quickly graduate from entry and intermediate-level brewing.”
Premises were found in the Abbeyhill district of the Scottish capital, continuing a long tradition of brewing in the area (the last of several former breweries is said to have closed its doors in 1986).
Among the plans for the future is to increase production and install a canning facility, the current output having to be transported to dedicated providers of canning and bottling. To that end, a successful funding application was recently confirmed by business competition, Scottish EDGE.
Continues Brown, negotiating the country’s business advice and funding ecology is an often inevitable part of the start-up journey, other ‘hoops’ including – not least if there is a commercial aspect – registering with HMRC (for permission to brew, package or hold beer) and acquiring environmental health, trading standards and other licences from the local authority.
Smith echoes the sentiment: “There is certainly ‘red tape’ involved, which is where our service can come in. We help breweries tick all the right boxes, make sure all the right licenses are in place. Alistair could give you chapter and verse on water supply and effluent discharge.
“There are quite a lot of things to think about. People often just think about the day they brew their first beer, but there is quite a lot of work required to get to that stage, even for quite a small brewery.
“But I go back to my initial point: the main thing is the commerciality, what you charge for the beer and how you achieve distribution, and that sort of thing.”
Visit www.bellfieldbrewery.com. Contact David Smith at www.brewingservices.co.uk.
Mike Wilson is a member of the Place Design Scotland team
Pictured: Bellfield Brewery, Edinburgh, Picture credit: PlaceDesignScotland
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