MICROBREWERS EVENT Dr. Sarah de Vos is the founder of Stumptail craft brewery, established in 2011. For more information on Stumptail please visit their webpage at www.stumptail.co.uk Stumptail is a registered SME on the NIAB Innovation Farm free business assistance programme www.innovationfarm.co.uk/free-assistance-for-small-businesses/. Sarah will be on hand to showcase her speciality beer made from Chevallier. Delegates will be given the opportunity to take away a sample of beer kindly donated by Stumptail. Priority will be given to new SMEs eligible to sign up for our free business assistance programme. Find out if you are eligible by completing our eligibility questionnaire contact sme@innovationfarm.co.uk to receive your copy. We will reserve a sample of beer for eligible SMEs returning their completed and signed questionnaires ahead of the event.
Speaker Biographies & Talk Summaries Dr Keith Thomas. BA, PhD, Cert Ed, DipBrew. Senior Lecturer in Microbiology at the University of Sunderland. Faculty of Applied Sciences, Chester Road, Sunderland. UK. SR1 3SD. Tel +(44) 191 514 4746. e mail: keith.thomas@sunderland.ac.uk. Keith Thomas gained a first degree in Biological Sciences at the University of York in 1973 and a doctorate investigating the production of alcohol from paper waste. Following this he worked with a number of breweries developing quality control procedures before establishing Brewlab Ltd in 1986 and the associated Darwin Brewery in 1996. He is currently Senior Lecturer at the University of Sunderland with responsibilities for Biotechnology programmes as well as conducting research into topics relevant to small scale brewing. He has yet to realise an ambition of converting newspaper into beer but enjoys the challenges of applying microbiology to the contemporary brewing industry. TALK TITLE: WHEN SIZE MATTERS This presentation will address the question of how small scale brewing practices affect beer character and quality.
Peter Haydon. Brewer, A Head In A Hat Beers (http://aheadinahat.com/ahead.html) email: aheadahat@gmail.com Peter's book The English Pub, the seminal work on the history of beer and pubs, was published in 1994. A stint as editor of microbrewing journal, The Grist, put him in an ideal position to represent Britain s smaller brewers and he was General Secretary of SIBA (The Society of Independent Brewers) between October 1997 and March 2002, during which time he persuaded the government to introduce the system of Progressive Beer Duty that has so radically transformed British brewing in the past decade. From there he moved to the Meantime Brewing Co., in Greenwich where he reckons he did nearly every job in the brewery. In 2011 he left to take over the brewery operation located in his local pub and he now specialises in recreating recipes from old London breweries, which he distributes across South London under the A Head In A Hat range. TALK TITLE: BRITISH MICROBREWING - FUTURE TRENDS Presentation will be a brief review of the UK microbrewing scene both before and after the introduction of PBD and future trends in a maturing market.
John Moss CEO of Botanix Ltd Botanix Ltd specialises in the supply of hops and refined hop extracts to brewers around the world. Through Botanix partnership with the hop growers co-operative (English Hops Ltd) John is also responsible for selling 50% of the UK hop crop. He set up Simplyhops Ltd as an E-commerce based business aimed at supporting the needs of the growing craft brew industry. The E-commerce experience has taught him that brewers order hops at strange times of the day and quite a few of them expect to be told what s going on via twitter. By background he is a Chemical Engineer (but don t hold that against him). He is married with four sons whose personal development has moved from being labour intensive to being capital intensive. TALK TITLE: HOPS - THE SPICE OF BEER Hops have a huge impact on the quality and appeal of beer. That s no accident since compounds originally present in the hop or modified by the action of heat, ph, hydrolysis or yeast metabolism can be very flavour active. Whether it s a cool, crisp, clean and refreshing lager, or a full flavoured pale ale or porter, the hops make all the difference. Despite hundreds of years of growing hops and hop variety development, as well the application of the latest analytical techniques, it is still impossible to fully characterise the compounds present in the hop or to predict accurately how a particular hop will behave in the brewing process. That is the art and the science of brewing. In this paper current consumer trends as well as the hop varieties which may meet them are briefly reviewed, and the author will describe some of the work being undertaken to improve the choices available to the brewer. As well as new varieties being developed throughout the world the potential of current and long forgotten English hop varieties will also be addressed.
Dr Chris Ridout. Strategic Research Scientist. Dept of Crop Sciences, John Innes Centre Chris Ridout is a research scientist at the John Innes Centre in Norwich. Chris s research aims to make disease control more effective and durable in wheat and barley with fewer chemicals. He has been investigating heritage barley varieties and landraces as sources of disease resistance that can be used for breeding with modern varieties. TALK TITLE: REVIVING CHEVALLIER, THE VICTORIAN MALTING BARLEY Chris has revived Chevallier, an old barley variety renowned for its malting quality, and trials have been conducted to evaluate its agronomy, disease resistance, malting and brewing potential. Chris will talk about results from these trials, and how he has been working with Brewlab, Stumptail and craft brewers to evaluate beer made from Chevallier.