Balanced. Just like nobody goes into Space for the food, nobody goes into the beer industry with the idea of creating a balanced business as your goal. You do it for the love of beer, for the adventure, the fun – but balanced? That said, when your brewery has been around for 34-years and has seen some real highs and some real lows, being balanced like a Zen master is something good to achieved. Velo Mitrovich reports from Nethergate Brewery.

From the Escondido hills of San Diego, to outback Broome, Australia, when brewers get together and ask each other what they brew, they all take a quick look at the tattoo on their left forearm for a reminder in black ink and reply: “I brew only what I like to drink.” High fives are then given, soul handshakes exchanged, and maybe even a couple of “Right on brother/sister.” 

And while this exchange is going on, a couple of quick nervous glances are given to that other group of brewers on the other side of the room. You know, the brewers that have gone out of business. Why did they go bust? Because these are the brewers who actually lived up to that motto. 

Somewhere in the middle of the room are the brewers from Nethergate. Having been on both sides of that room, the biggest lesson they’ve learned in those 34-years is you have to rethink the philosophy of  “I know best” and instead take on “I know best because I listen.”  If you’re in a small village or town, or in a city with competition out the ying-yang, or have the worse distributor known to mankind, you cannot afford to make creative beers for the few, but need to think of the majority of your customers and how you’re going to keep them.

In looking at the numerous strengths of award-winning Nethergate Brewery in Rodbridge Corner, giving its customers exactly what they want is exactly why the brewery is thriving today after several very rocky periods involving everything from changing owners, names, moving locations, to going into receivership.

Where is Rodbridge Corner? Trust TBJ on this, Rodbridge Corner is not the sort of place that your car’s satnav jumps right on. Located in East Anglia’s Long Melford – just a rooster step north of Sudbury – if you draw a line on a map between Ipswich and Cambridge, it is close to the middle. Even in the dead of winter, the afternoon sun makes this area look stunning and you can see the reason for all the hiking paths, one which goes right past Nethergate. 

If you listen into pub conversations –tourists get a mention more than once – and talk to pub staff, it takes about one second to realise this is a conservative part of the UK and is reflected in the beer and spirits that locals drink. What flies as an interesting sour in London, Somerset and the Republic of Brighton, would be poured down the drain in Rodbridge Corner as beer gone bad.

Even though the area’s economy is very much boosted by tourism, even though Nethergate has a long history in the greater area, and even though most villages would sell the mayor’s gold chain to get a modern craft brewery in their patch, there was still some opposition when Nethergate moved to its current location (a former car lot). 

Despite the current brewery being located well before you enter Rodbridge-proper and its antique centre and half-dozen tea and cake shops, and despite having wide, wide open farmers’ fields running parallel along the brewery’s entire west and south sides, there were questions regarding traffic and potential noise from music during planning meetings in October 2016. 

In defence, however, of the majority of the community, local government officials from Long Melford and Sudbury listened to the community and latched onto the idea, throwing their support behind the brewery’s new location – which is actually close to its original location in Clare. (If you’ve been around for the length of time as Nethergate has, your history gets a bit complicated).

History 101

According to head brewer Ian Carson, the brewery originally started with Ian Hornsey and Dick Burge drinking in a local pub, who figured they could make a better beer. With Burge being involved in finance and Hornsey a microbiologist, they were more than capable of making this idea come alive. The name came the road the brewery was first located on in the small village of Clare.

“They started making what we have now call Suffolk County ale – called Nethergate Best Bitter back then. They brewed for a couple of years, added a couple more beers to the to the range, and just kept growing,” says Carson. “The two decided in 2005 to move to new premises in Pentlow, which is about three miles away where we are now.”

Keeping the range of beers low, Nethergate grew from strength to strength. But, with Burge wanting to retire, Nethergate was sold in 2010 to a consortium, including three ex-Adnams employees, who moved the brewery across the border from Suffolk into north Essex.

For the first two years the brewery did extremely well, winning the Good Pub Guide ‘Brewery of the Year’ title in 2012 and other awards.

In 2012 the brewery underwent a major rebrand and changed the name of the brewery to ‘Growler’ after one of its beers, several core beers were dropped, others added, and it was decided to expand into other markets, including London.

JDO Brand Design’s rebrand paper is still online for Nethergate/Growler and makes for interesting reading. 

The new team was much more ambitious and driven than the Burge and Hornsey and wanted to drive the brand nationally. With JDO, they laid out very clear goals. These included:

• Winning 10% new customers within six months;
• Securing a prestigious retail account – for the business impact as well as the kudos
• Increasing market share in established territories by 15%
• Increasing core portfolio beer sales by 20%

The brewery either met or exceeded all the goals that the rebranding plan laid out. Profitability rose by 32 percent, turnover saw a 37 percent increase, and they brought in four new retail customers; Tesco, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, and Co-op.

And then…and then…and then in 2014, Growler Brewery went into receivership. 

What happened?

One London bottle shop owner, who used to stock Nethergate/Growler beers, tells TBJ that the brewery was trying to expand into already saturated markets. They were also a brand of beer that you did not noticed was no longer being distributed until years after the fact.

Another view is that the new management team was so concerned about gaining new markets, that they ignored the old, which is where the brewery had its strength.

From a practical viewpoint, an advantage all London craft breweries had over Nethergate/Growler was not having to drive anywhere from two to three hours to make deliveries. Considering the vast amount of craft breweries in London, all doing something similar, all with very tight margins, not having shipping costs is enough to make a difference.

At a fire-sale price of £60,000, the brewery was sold to a consortium, led by founder Dick Burge, which purchased the brewery in April 2014. One of the first acts was to restore the name back to Nethergate and to refocus selling beer to local free houses. Burge told a local paper at the time: “It feels like a homecoming, in a way. I’ve always felt emotionally involved in Nethergate as a brand, and I did not want to see it die.”

As general manager Robert (Rob) Crawford says: “Today we’re trying to make our business a financially viable business, rather than just trying to sell it everywhere and anywhere.”

Nethergate trio

With a staff of 15, plus part-time taproom help, you hate to single out anyone for kudos, but it is hard to see Nethergate being in the position it is today without general manager Crawford, head brewer Carson, and, most importantly, its investor team that brought it back from near-death. 

What is interesting that in the big scheme of things, the first two at initial glance are not who you picture in their positions.

Carson, former assistant brewer at Hogs Back Brewery, has spent the majority of his career at Nethergate/Growler, working up to head brewer. His training has consisted solely of on-the-job, and you have to think he’s had a brilliant mentor or two, such as former head brewers Tom Knox and Paul Gower.

In addition, for a six-month period at Nethergate, the soft-spoken Carson was with beer sales. In dealing with customers, listening to what they want in a beer and what actually sells was just as important in his overall beer training.

Crawford is an accountant and spent his first eight years in public practice, far away from beer except what he was served at a pub. He started during the waning days of Growler and has been with Nethergate ever since, working his way up to his current position.

In looking at various companies ranking from breweries to beef jerky, putting an accountant in charge has often been the kiss of death, with too much emphasis on bottom-line and not on quality.

This is far from the case at Nethergate, according to Carson, and he is at a loss trying to remember anytime that Crawford shot down at idea for new equipment and beer launches.

“We have shareholders who I have to report to. And these guys are good businessman, and then they want a good business,” says Crawford. “We have the creativity of a decent head brewer, who has some lovely creative ideas. And I think you need that creativity within brewing because not all businesses run by accountants are the most creative – we’re known for being a bit more prudent in our approach. So the balance of a creative mind and someone keeping close watch on the purse strings means that we’ve got a really nice balanced business.”

Nethergate would have not come back from the dead with a core group of investors, but alongside them are also small investors who helped to fund the move to Nethergate’s current site.

These investors came from Nethergate’s membership scheme for £40, gives you a membership card entitling you to 10 percent off all products in the shop and tap room, a branded polo shirt, a brewery tour for you and a friend, and exclusive members’ nights. 

“When we were we’re funding the purchase of this site, we offered out to these members to see if they wants to become smaller investors, a bit like the bigger guys of Brewdog did to try and gain finance,” says Crawford. “So we have in the region of 200 smaller shareholders who helped support us.”

While Crawford has a different relationship with the investors that with the shareholders, the two groups have something very much in common.

“They love being part of the brewery; they love this little brewery. It’s one of those industries, which has a passion around it, which is beyond the actual business itself – there’s a lot of people that just love being part of a brewery.”

Creating a destination

When Nethergate moved into its new facilities in 2017, it just didn’t want to have a brewery, but it also wanted to have a place that people would use for a destination.

“When we were down tucked away in Pentlow, we really didn’t have many people knowing where we were – you could get a mile down the road and no one really knew how to navigate where we were located,” says Crawford. “With this location, we situated ourselves between two little villages, Long Melford and Rodbridge Corner, where we figured we get lots of people driving pass the brewery. So we wanted easy parking so people could come, stop, and take beer away with them or come in, have a pint, and take some way when they go.”

A problem, too, the brewery was seeing – and still sees – is the varying serving quality of its beer. Indeed, in looking at reviews of Nethergate’s beer, the only negative ones regarding beer quality come from pubs, not from the brewery’s taproom or bottled beer.

“It’s quite frustrating as a brewer that you can’t always control the quality cask ale is, relying on the landlord to look after it and serve it in the best way possible,” says Carson. “The pressures on landlords to supply a wider range of ales means they sometimes keep their product on far too long, which means that the quality suffers over time. We have the luxury that we produce our beer here, we can control that quality, which means that there’s no variables.”

By putting in a taproom in the new facility, Nethergate could control the quality of the beer served and people would get to know what Nethergate beer should taste like.

“To be honest, the tap room has been fundamental to what we’ve done over the last five years. We were never sure quite how people were going to use it when we set this tap room up, but it’s exceeded our expectations.”

When you enter the shop/tap room, you first pass bottled beer for sale, some merchandise, and some local bottled gins and wines. There are then some small tables, along with typical pub stools, next to the taps. There is then a large covered heated area with comfortable, dog-friendly couches. Going outside are picnic benches and a view of a big sky over farmers’ fields.

“We wanted to create a place where people can come and enjoy beer. We only have our beers on tap, but we have like a range of six or seven beers –  sometimes eight or nine depending on the time of year – and the beers we’ve got available,” says Crawford. “We’re not like a pub, we don’t sell a vast array of gins, wines, and all that. We can offer a glass of wine or a gin and tonic, but it’s mainly focuses about the beer.”

There is no much on offer when it comes to food. A gourmet macaroni cheese food truck is a draw, but it normally only comes on a Friday evening. 

“It’s quite popular. People come down and have a have a beer and macaroni cheese and stay and have an enjoyable evening. As it is, the mac-truck is a low hassle way for us to provide food,” says Crawford. “We do struggle at the weekends to find a food truck that will come at the weekends because generally the weekends they go to larger events where they can guarantee trade and things like that.”

“Providing people with food on weekends is something we’d like to do and we may look to be doing it ourselves in the in the next couple of years. We have a bit of food like scotch eggs, pork pies, and sausage rolls but that doesn’t always cut it on a Saturday afternoon. So, we are looking at other options.”

When asked about the brewery having its own restaurant, Crawford gives a look which says a lot and says: “We’re brewers, we brew beer.”

In other words, no.

Three experiences for beer fans can be purchased at the brewery. The first is a brewery tour, which includes samples. The second it a beer day in which you spend the entire day with the brewer, in which you help make beer. Included with the price are 18 pints of beer which you have brewed – to be collected later. The last is a Brew Your Own Beer experience where you design and create a recipe with Nethergate. The end result is 144 pints of finished beer.

According to Crawford, all are popular, especially the day spent shadowing the brewer. 

While the area where Nethergate is located is lovely, being in a fairly rural location comes with its own challenges, with the biggest one being there are few people within an easy walk. With drink laws getting tougher and putting more pressure on people not to drink and drive, village pubs and breweries are suffering. 

“All we can do is just be the best that can be and to try to be better than the others,” says Crawford. 

The balanced plan

If you’ve ever been with a company that’s gone into receivership, it’s not a pleasant experience, and it stays with you for a long time.

Due to many factors, ranging from not enough hours in a day with too small of staff, to just general incompetence, many craft breweries seem to fly by the seat of their pants. It’s no surprise that a number close every year.

With Nethergate/Growler, they’ve experienced the full gambit from a phoenix’s view: Birth, growth, death, ashes, and rebirth. 

“Of course, we always have a plan of where we want to drive the business. If you don’t have focus and a plan, you’re taking a scattergun approach and you can’t focus on the running an effective business. You’ve got to have an idea of where you want to sell your beer, what you want to be, and who you want to be before you can create a business,” says Crawford.

“It was a number of years ago, but we, we’ve changed this business from where it was to where it is now. But we’ve gone back to our roots because when we started out in Claire, we were a little brewery in a little village where everyone knew the beer. 

“Everyone came in on an evening and had a drink with the brewer. You can do that now. Last night I came down and in sitting there with a number of regulars having a drink and having a chat over one of our beers, and you can still do that now. So while the business has changed, we’re still back to our roots of where we started out back in Claire, where everyone loved us.

“We’re going to continue progressing what we’re doing, where we’ve got a solid stable base of what we’re doing now. We’re creating some really good beers. Our Venture was created just over a year ago; it’s a 3.7% ABV amber and that’s sailing away. It’s one of our bestselling beers now. 

“So we’re creating some good products. We’re driving our online presence and our physical destination here. We’ve got the tap room, and we’re focusing on our local trade, supporting our local pubs, and trying to give them the best quality product we can do,” says Crawford.