Moonwake’s team started their beer careers on opposite sides of the world but in Leith they share a common bond. Melissa Cole meets the new kids on the block in one of Scotland’s most vibrant brewing scenes.
When Joni Mitchell sang, ‘you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone’, I doubt she was thinking about me, sitting in a battered wheelie chair cuddling a border terrier in a taproom under construction, but the song was running on loop in my head when I visited Leith’s newest brewery resident, Moonwake, a few months back.
As I sat, trying the first batch of beers to come off the line with owners Vinny Rosario and Fin Heslop, and their sales and marketing team members Wesley Hall and Sarah Sinclair, and being delighted that one of the two resident border terriers, Pedro, was making himself comfortable on my lap, I realised it was the first new brewery I’d been in for nearly two years and how much I’d missed it.
There’s a sense of pent up energy when you visit breweries at this point in their journey, a moment that puts me in mind of the trembling meniscus of an over-poured pint, just waiting to spill over, and Moonwake, despite all the challenges it has faced by getting started in the middle of the world going sideways, was absolutely pregnant with it.
Having spent most of the strict Scottish lockdown decorating the brewery with the business’s striking branding and plotting what they’d do when they came out of it, the team was clearly very keen to get on with business and have been doing so admirably it seems.
Chatting to Rosario, who is also the head brewer, there’s a little more calm in his voice than when we met, he sounds a bit firmer about things, a lot more in control – which, to be fair, is probably because he’s now actually making beer on a regular basis, as opposed to painting (and, quite possibly, climbing) the walls.
So I ask him what’s been keeping him busy in the brew house. “I didn’t anticipate how many cans we’d be selling”, he says in a happy voice, “we’ve got three Them That Can mobile canning slots lined up in the next five weeks.” Not bad for the new kid on the already quite brewery-heavy Leith block.
“We have been pretty lucky though, once we get into pubs, they tend to order more but getting that first pint into people’s hands is the difficult thing, and we’ve still got a bit of work to do with distributors.”
“Finally getting the tap room open has also been invaluable and we have just employed a manager. I’ve been pleasantly surprised that the majority people drinking have come from within half of a mile of the taproom, we are lucky in Leith that it very much does practice what it preaches in the supporting local businesses, it would be nice if more places did too.
“I also want more people to enjoy beer, regardless of age or background, and we will keep working towards that.”
Vinny Rosario, Moonwake
To rewind a little, the brewery was founded in January 2020, not long before the pandemic hit, with the help of two private investors, both of whom have an architectural background, which proved invaluable for designing the very tight space in which they have elegantly squeezed themselves, and a Regional Selective Assistance (RSA) grant from the local Scottish government, plus some asset financing by Close Brothers.
With all of this in place, the business can not only pay its staff above real living wage, it also means that the brewery has been designed with excellent accessibility and the potential for people normally excluded from the brewhouse to work in one, something that Vinny is clearly very passionate about.
“Whilst the RSA grant ensured we had to include things like wheelchair access, which we would always have done regardless, it also meant that we could keep manual handling in the brew house to an absolute minimum.”
And, as he gets rolling on the subject, his voice gets stronger and the Kiwi accent gets thicker as his feelings become very clear that the industry is undoubtedly facing a physical health reckoning.
“I’ve been in too many breweries that are just fundamentally unsafe. You’re starting to see this generation of craft brewers, who have been in brewing for 10-plus years and their backs are stuffed and their hands are stuffed and they are leaving to move to sales or marketing or just entirely.
It’s quite a new problem for the industry but it’s definitely going to be a big one, so we need to stop that happening to the next generation of brewers.
“We want to get and keep staff, not break them immediately and move on to the next.”
As one of the depressingly few head brewers and owners of colour in craft beer as whole, Rosario is also hoping that not only his presence, but his business, can help be part of the change that’s needed.
“To be blunt, the beer industry doesn’t have a lot of colour, so we are looking for as diverse a team as possible.
“Personally, I know it’s about being seen, and showing that different people can brew and whilst I know I’m lucky, I sort of just stumbled into it as someone who is happy to just ask questions, but not everyone is lucky and other brown people frequently don’t get why I would want to be in beer and actually ask me that outright…”, which is a damning indictment on the state of ‘craft’ if ever I heard one.”
However, as painful as all of this seems right now, he seems very positive about the current conversations happening.
“One of the bright things in the industry that’s happening is around racist marketing and tribal symbolism. For example, someone puts New Zealand hops in something and then they just stick the second tā moko (Māori tattoo) they find on the Google search on the label, without a care for what it means to the Māori people.
“Same with things like the Om symbol… I mean, I’m not Hindu but I know it has a lot of religious meaning, and you don’t see people sticking Christ on the cross on a lot beer labels do you? It doesn’t take much to look it up does it? I think good advice would be, if it doesn’t seem right, it probably isn’t.”
Words to live by really; but, back to business. It’s clear that Moonwake is determined to play nicely with others in the area, with discussions happening around creating a walking Edinburgh brewery trail, which tallies with the council to promote tourism that doesn’t include cars.
Which is very much about supporting the whole of the Edinburgh craft scene: “I’d just like to see more people drinking local beer and less drinking major international brands, and trying to support our fellow local producers.
“I also want more people to enjoy beer, regardless of age or background, and we will keep working towards that, that it’s not just for this niche group, which can be intimidating… we don’t want to be that,” he adds thoughtfully.
