It was a chance meeting that led to the creation of Brixton Brewery. Jez and Libby met Mike and Xochitl in a bar, bonded over newborn babies and then realised they had been neighbours for three years! They were both home brewers and, after a few discussions, Mike and Jez pooled some savings and found a railway arch in Brixton in which to open a brewery. This was in 2013 and they started with a ten hectolitre plant and two fermenters. Jez said, “Brixton was seeing a resurgence and we wanted to put Brixton on the map for craft beer. It was a bit of a leap of faith. We started with three beers. Our aim was to sell locally and for the first few years we had no van, borrowing a neighbour’s trolley to deliver the beer. Some of the initial customers are still our customers today.”
In the following years the brewery grew organically, increasing the number of arches that they rented to three. In 2017, Brixton formed a partnership with Heineken after the big brewer had approached them. Heineken had originally taken a 49% stake and, in 2021, they bought the brewery outright. The money enabled Brixton Brewery to grow, moving to a new site, still in Brixton, and installing a much larger brewery. Jez explained, “We didn’t set up the brewery with the idea of selling it. We think of the brewery as a love letter to Brixton. We run as an independent business and live by the values we started with, while wanting to meet our full potential.” Three of the four founders remain involved today. Jez is still the managing director and Xochitl works three or four days a week, looking after HR, sustainability and marketing. Libby stood down a couple of years ago and Mike acts as a consultant on business strategy and finance.
The support provided by Heineken has been in the form of a marketing budget and access to their distribution network. Around 90% of the production is draught and 10% cans. All the core beers are still produced in Brixton with some other lines contract brewed.
Jez said, “Brixton is now the fourth largest craft brewery in the on trade behind Brewdog, Beavertown and Camden Town. We produce around 60,000 hectolitres a year, compared to 2,700 when we were in the arches. We wouldn’t have made the jump in size without Heineken.
We have now outgrown this site; we can’t expand here but we do want to remain in Brixton. This is at the heart of our business.” Brixton remain committed to pubs, “We have a deliberate strategy of being predominantly draught. It’s about bonding over a pint; we see this as important to our community values. We started as a community brewery and we need to brew beers that people enjoy. We aren’t ‘uber craft’.”
These days, Brixton have two delivery vans and sell to over 2,500 pubs, mainly in London and the south east. They have a canning line and they see this as an area of growth, with major supermarkets seen as a key opportunity. Over the next year or so, they will also be looking to increase their brand awareness with link ups with comedy, music and the spoken word, as well as advertising outside London. “The name Brixton resonates with people. It has provenance. Our tenth birthday party was to say thank you to the local community who have supported us from the start. It was about local food, local music and local drinks, including the soft drinks,” said Jez.
It was the local community that helped the brewery through lockdown. “We had to throw a lot of beer away and we sold yeast for baking and donated the proceeds to charity. We furloughed some staff and did online sales with the brewers packing orders. I was out delivering the beer myself. I really enjoyed it; it was like the early days. People were so happy to see you,” explained Jez, who added, “We were fortunate to have the support of Heineken. It wasn’t easy but it was less stressful thanks to them. I am grateful for that.”
So, what of the future? There has been continuing investment, including a new laboratory and moves to become greener. Brixton are investing in CO2 recovery and have just completed a carbon accounting exercise. They are also about to do an impact assessment on the supply chain downstream such as their malt suppliers. Jez said, “Our malt is sent to anaerobic digesters that produce energy and fertiliser but we can’t do this with our hops due to the chemicals we use in our cleaning regime. Most of our hops are from the USA with some from Germany and we use English hops in some of our speciality beer. For the first time, this year, we are doing a doing a green hop beer using Ernest from Hukins Hops in Kent.”
And to leave the last word to Jez, “We have our values intact and we are not going to forget where we came from.”
For further information go to www.brixtonbrewery.com.
Christine Cryne