Retirement offers up a change of pace away from the full-time commitments of a head brewer. There are, of course, pros and cons to such a move. For John Keeling, it has been a case of making new priorities and catching up on lost time.

When I retired, I wondered what it would be like. Not to have to get up and go to work but to be able to do what you want and when you want to do it. I wondered what I would miss the most, because I already knew what I was glad to be rid of. That list included any form of management training, doing appraisals and being appraised. Lord protect us all from management gurus and the latest thinking on how to manage people efficiently. 

I quickly realised it was the people that I missed most and that daily interaction. I decided to counter this by going out for a pub lunch as often as possible and anyone who follows me on Twitter must know that already.

For the first few months I threw myself into the work I had left over from being employed at Fuller’s. This involved travelling to Milan, Prague and Barcelona in quick succession. I was discussing all things beer with many people but always with my Fuller’s hat on. Indeed, it still felt that I was still at work.

Gradually I started to think about things in a different way not just about how a Fuller’s head brewer should think about things. I then truly began to think of myself as ex-Fuller’s. It did help that I had chatted to Roger Protz and Pete Brown about the future of cask beer. Indeed, I did an article in this very magazine. 

I then went to see a group of people in Leeds organised by my good friend Ian Garrett. I found myself thinking more and more about this and wrote a discussion article for CAMRA and was asked by another friend Peter Alexander, aka Tandleman, to sit on the panel at the Manchester Beer Festival to discuss the future of cask beer. 

I have been thinking about the question of fairness in duty. People have argued that to treat cask beer differently to other beers is wrong and unfair to those beers. I would argue that duty is not applied fairly now and no matter how the government view duty, fairness is not high on the agenda.

Take the basic fact about duty that it increases as the alcohol content increases. Why should a strong beer pay more duty? It already has higher costs because it uses more malt. Cider is not taxed this way. It is banded. In fact, you can date this back several centuries when the government wanted grain to be grown for bread not beer.

Cask beer is already taxed differently because of sediment allowance so why can’t we take advantage of this?  In fact, why can’t we argue that bottle conditioned beers should have a sediment allowance too.

Small Brewers duty relief is not exactly a fair tax. Not that I think it should change. In fact, it is a good model for the argument for cask beer duty relief.

Many people have asked me what the biggest influence on my career has been. I always answer Her Majesty’s Government. The way they have changed duty rates, the way they calculate duty and decide how many pubs a brewery can own. This always have had greater affect of my career than anything else.

Gradually the old Fuller’s commitments died away and left me some free time. I was still in contact with many of my old Fuller’s friends but now it was different, I no longer had the “up-to-date “information, so I began to have different and more impartial views on Fuller’s and beer-related topics. 

I also realised that I could do things in beer that was impossible when I was at the brewery. They were impossible because I simply did not have the time.  For example, I started writing this in Sao Paulo and I am finishing it in Blumeneau the sight of the Brazilian Beer competition.

I have been a judge here tasting 45 beers per day. Judging is always fun, and I never had the time whilst at Fuller’s to accept these invites. Also here are two other Englishmen here, Bill Simmons who I worked with for many years at Fuller’s and Mark Dorber, who many will know and most certainly will remember him from his days at the White Horse in Parsons Green, London.

One of the great things about judging is of course meeting new friends and visiting new places. It is always gratifying for people to express their admiration of Fuller’s beer and to that end our importer, Boxer, have been very good at spreading the message in Brazil.

One of the things I can’t do anymore is offer to give my new friends a tour of Fuller’s when they visit London, so I hope the team doesn’t mind being overrun by Brazilian brewers in the not too distant future. 

Here is hoping that I get many more invites to future beer festivals and that Tim, your esteemed editor will foot the bill. At this moment as Tim reads this copy, he is having a heart attack.

Goodbye from Brazil…