It’s great to see another London brewery make it to their tenth birthday but I suspect that Brick Brewery’s Ian Stewart did not anticipate the leisure market’s recent turbulence when he started the business all those years ago. This is Brick’s story.
Ian, like a lot of other brewery founders, was a home brewer but his home brewing was mainly done during his sixteen years in the USA. He came back to London because of his job and met his wife, Sally. At this time, he had given up home brewing – until Sally stepped in. One Christmas she gave him a home brew kit which sat around untouched until she asked him if he was going to do anything with it. Persuaded, he took the kit to the shed and his love of brewing started all over again. Ian said, “I took three kitchen kettles and stripped out their elements, putting them into three tubs. I could brew 100 litres at a time and I have kept a bottle of every brew I did. This included ciders as well as beer. I even had a bottle of my ‘home made’ beer at the weekend.”
Ian brewed regularly at home from 2010 to 2012 but then came indications that he might be made redundant. “I could see the writing on the wall and decided that this was the time to start brewing. I signed the lease on a property in a railway arch near Peckham Rye. I installed my home brew kit and even managed to sell a couple of firkins.” In the meantime, Ian ordered a 1,000 litre kit with three fermenters and, in April 2013, as anticipated, he was made redundant. “But it wasn’t perfect timing,” said Ian. “We had twins about that time.” Ian reminisced, “We opened in the summer with a range of cask beers: Kinsale Bitter, Steam Lager and St Thomas Gardiner, a pale ale named after a C17th orchard owner. I also brewed a Pilsner which I had originally brewed on my home kit. We still do that beer today with only a few minor tweaks to the recipe.”
At this time, Ian was doing everything himself, from sales and deliveries to hand bottling. Eventually, Ian hired Russell, a local home brewer, to help. Although Russell has moved on (he is now a plumber), Ian is still in contact. The next recruit was Aidan, who had a dual role of tap room manager and drayman. Aidan is now at Camden Brewery. Brick continued to grow organically, re-investing the brewery’s profits, until, in 2017, Brick took a leap forward. Ian explained, “We decided to move to new premises as we had outgrown the old site. We found premises in Deptford. We got a couple of friends to put in a little investment and we bought a 30,000 litre kit, installed seven fermenters and a whirlpool and moved to keg in a big way. We kept the premises in Peckham for use as a tap room. It had been intended to keep a microbrewery there for small batches but we decided to use the space for seating instead. If you look at the floor, you can see where the tanks were.”
Investment in the brewery has continued. There is now a cold room and eighteen fermenters. A new canning line was installed in 2019. “This proved to be fortunate,” explained Ian. “It was just in time for the pandemic. I initially furloughed all the staff (we had 22 employees at the time) and Sally and I ran the business. An online shop was set up and I was making 50 to 60 deliveries a day, sometimes up to 10pm at night. After about six weeks we started to bring people back as the tanks ran down. We got a licence to sell from the brewery and were selling directly to the public on Saturdays and Sundays.”
The beer range has gradually expanded. There are regulars such the Pale and Pilsner, which are their biggest sellers, plus seasonals including a rye beer and a stout. The beers tend to be biased towards using American and German hops and Ian commented that they have been experimenting with increased dry hopping, thus reducing the amount of hops used in the boil. Brick also specialise in kettle sours. In 2023, Ian estimates that they will do 23 different recipes, including one for Marks & Spencer. “We started producing sours in 2016 with a rhubarb sour. We have refined what we do and now have our own lactobacillus strain, which we replace about every 20 brews from a sample we keep at Wicklow.”
Despite the bias towards keg, Brick continues to brew cask beer, with handpumps in their tap room and recently they held a cask beer festival.
Brick celebrate their tenth birthday this year but, even for a successful brewery and tap room, there are still challenges. Ian said, “I feel that we have been fire fighting of late, focusing on the day to day. For example, the rail strikes have had a 50% impact on our tap room sales. We felt we needed to be nimble and diversify and so we have expanded into own label beers for restaurants and M&S.” Looking forward, Ian intends to continue to grow and invest their own money despite the current situation. Brick recently commissioned a centrifuge, which has improved their yield. One of the plans is to look at ways of becoming greener and part of this is carbon dioxide capture. Ian said, “Eddie Gadd (Ramsgate Brewery) already does this and captures 12% more than he uses. We recycle where we can. A local farmer takes our spent malt and hops. Sometimes the local allotments pop over and take some hops as well.”
In addition, the next big outlay will be another tap room. “Our current tap room accounts for about 35% of our sales and the new premises are right by Deptford Station. We hope to have it open in the next couple of months.” Brick may have been around for a decade but it is clear that there is no intention of resting on their laurels.
For more details on the brewery, go to here and for the tasting notes produced by the London Tasting Panel, see the brewery pages on the London Regional website.
The address of the original taproom is Arch 209, Blenheim Grove, Peckham Rye
Christine Cryne