After nearly 20 years in the speciality chemical industry I’d ended up behind a desk. I wanted to get back to doing things I loved, and I’ve always loved operating process equipment to make excellent products. In 2018 I made the transition to brewing and worked for three and a half years at Bowland Brewery in Lancashire on their 30 BBL kit. This proved a great apprenticeship within a great brewing team and during my time there I completed by IBD General Certificate in Brewing and Part One of the IBD Brewing Diploma. Subsequent to that, in 2022, I completed and passed Part 2 of the Diploma as well.

To brew well you need excellent attention to detail, my grounding in this was established during my time working with precious metal chemicals. You need to work with the strengths and weaknesses of the brew kit you have in front of you. I have experience of kits from a 2.5 BBL Dave Porter Kit, up to the 30 BBL Vincent Johnson Kit at Bowland. You need to have a good handle of what is important (i.e. temperature) and what is flexible within the brewing process so you can steer natural products (malt, hops) through a manual process to give a highly consistent wort and then final beer. Experience and my training with the IBD have given me this.

To design a beer you need a good handle on different beer styles and know the range of malts, hops and yeasts which are available to you. You need to be comfortable with design calculations, know which water composition is needed for the style in hand and how much of each brewing salt to add to achieve this. But all of this is of little use without that spark of creativity and knowing which flavour combinations will work well together. I love designing beers and have had pleasing feedback from the four designs of mine which have made it as far as commercial sale.

I pondered starting my own solo nano brewery, but I love the interaction with other people too much, especially the wonderful folk of the brewing community. So now I want to use all I’ve learned to help others design, make and improve their own beers.

Cheers!

Will Weston (The Hop Doctor)