London’s Big Smoke Brew Co has come a long, long way since starting out eight years ago. They certainly didn’t expect to be a dominant UK force in airport brewery taprooms and bars, but here we are. And for the business founded on a wealth of experience in hospitality, there’s a lot more to come, too.

We all want visitors to our pubs, bars and taprooms. For Big Smoke Brew Co, some 18 million of these potential customers pass by their Taphouse & Kitchen at Terminal 2 of London’s Heathrow Airport each year. They’d just need the best part of 180,000 50l kegs to pour everyone a pint. 

Not only that, the brewery has another three airport sites to cater for too. And that’s before we’ve taken into account the 14 pubs located across the south of England employing a workforce of 300. Not bad going for an outfit that started in the shed of a pub back in 2014.

“It must have been way back in 2001. James would end up giving me my first pub job at a place called Shillibeer’s on London’s Caledonian Road,” recalls Richard Craig. “One of the first things he asked me was if I had worked behind a bar before. I said ‘yes’, which was a complete lie.”

He smiles: “But then again by that point he had kept me waiting 45 mins while he walked around looking important so I thought we were pretty even.”

His interviewer that day was James Morgan. And in the years, and decades, to follow, Morgan would become a friend, colleague and eventually co-founder of Big Smoke Brew Co. A Surrey-based modern brewery and pub company, and one that recently celebrated its eighth birthday as 2022 draws to a close.

For Morgan, working and running pubs runs in his blood. “I lived in pubs until I was eight or nine,” he says. “My dad (Dick Morgan) used to run a lot of pubs in the West End of London so after I left school I went straight to work in these establishments.

“We’d go own to manage and run many of these together. And when Big Smoke first started making beer he would support us by buying it, even when it probably wasn’t very good. But that said, if it didn’t sell then he’d simply stop, He’s far too commercially-minded to buy any old rubbish!”

But before Big Smoke came to be, Morgan and Craig would work together running other pubs such as The North Pole in Islington, where they got to try beers that would light a creative fire in them.

“We were able to get our hands on some American beers that everyone was talking about. But we also stocked beers from breweries such as Harbour in Cornwall, which were just getting going at the time,” explains Craig. 

“I remember having their Double IPA on tap, long before many people knew what that type of beer was. It was probably about 8% and we had to sell it for £12 because we bought it from someone that would have to use a distributor who bought it from someone else. You know how it is…

“But I was blown away by that beer and was my go-to staff drink at the end of the night. We made sure we always had it on!”

It was these formative experiences that only went to increase Craig and Morgan’s interest in the beer side of hospitality. They had a wealth of knowledge in cellaring and selling beer, but now they wanted to know how to make it, too.

Craig says: “It was there in North London where those seeds were planted. We had early dreams of building a brewery downstairs in The North Pole and looking back that would have been a nightmare, a complete disaster!

“So we decided that we’d like to start a pub together and that’s how The Antelope came about.”

The Antelope is based in Surbiton, a suburban neighbourhood in South West London, within the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames. “I’ll be honest, I hadn’t even heard of Surbiton until we visited,” Craig laughs. “But the pub had this amazing space in the back, an old stables, and that’s where Big Smoke would start.”

The team approached starting a brewery, as they explain, from a different angle to most other brewing businesses. “Nick (Blake) was the assistant manager of the pub, and he became our head brewer while Danny Roberts, a bar supervisor, would eventually go on to be our lead brewer,” says Morgan.

“It’s safe to say that calling us inexperienced was the biggest understatement ever. But we’ve always worked and grown in an organic way and thankfully it has always seemed to work for us. Well, most of the time!” adds Craig.

The team took over The Antelope in January of 2014. They’d open the doors the following month with brewing starting that September. The first beer produced on their modest brewhouse was Dark Wave, a 5% English-style Porter.  

These beers were a hit from the off, both at The Antelope and with early customers across the capital. It was all hands to the pump, which would also require team members like Craig to deliver beers personally. “Rich and I would drive about in a pretty old, knackered van visiting the trade,” says Morgan.

Craig adds: “Which was fine. But there was one time where I drove some beer to North London in the back of my old beaten up Mercedes. I was coming around Parliament Square and I was pulled over by the police.

“From the vantage point of their van they could see three casks sat across the backseat and there was another two in the boot. So there I was, stopped in front of all of these tourists taking photos having to explain to the Police that I was only delivering beer and wasn’t planning to be the new Guy Fawkes.”

With The Antelope a success, the opening of other Big Smoke pubs would follow. These include The Albion, featuring one of the biggest beer gardens in Kingston, and over 30 draught beers and ciders on tap, as well as being home of Big Smoke Distilling Co.

The Big Smoke pub family was growing, and with that, so was the demand for the brewery’s beers. It was evident that the facilities at the back of The Antelope could no longer cater for demand so they’d need a new brewery to keep up.

Come 2018, new sites for the brewery were being scoped out. These were in areas such as Battersea in South London and Sunbury-on-Thames in Surrey. They ticked some boxes, but not all.

“We were looking pretty flat out for about six months,” says Craig. “They had lots of merits but there were also issues with the size or location. But then the facility here in Esher came up and we put an offer in straight away.”

Esher is a mere four miles west of the original location at The Antelope and it’s there that the brewery has been able to realise its ambitions as a production business serving both Big Smoke Brew Co pubs, and other accounts too.

They’d secure the keys at the end of 2018, move in the following February and then commence brewing that March. And when it came to choosing a new brewhouse setup, they’d opt for a 30HL operation from UK-based Gravity Systems. 

Starting out with six 65HL FVs, they’ve since added another 12 to their cellar alongside a Lambrechts washer/filler, a larger HLT and CLT, whirlpool and a Microcan system to package 330ml and 440ml cans.

And it was through its work with Gravity Systems that Big Smoke Brew Co would be introduced to Jenn Merrick. Merrick, who was working as a consultant at the time, is a leading expert in the UK craft brewing industry, and has a wealth of experience in brand expansion, brewing, brewery operations, and building outstanding businesses; notably leading growth and expansion projects for Beavertown, Dark Star and Meantime.

And come 2022 she would take on the newly-created position of managing director at Big Smoke Brew Co, 15 years since moving to the UK from the USA.

“I moved here because my wife got a job at a charity in Yorkshire. We could have ended up anywhere, and we were looking all over the world for the next step. But I knew that when I landed here, that British brewing was something I wanted to learn,” she explains. “I had tried to get a foot in the door in the American industry, but it was really a boy’s club. Nobody was really willing to consider a woman for a brewery role.”

In England she’d undertake a course at Brewlab in Sunderland then carry out her IBD qualifications while working at York Brewery. “While in York we had a whiff of the American craft beer revolution,” she says. “I was allowed to design a handful of recipes and you would definitely know if there was something like Cascade in that beer because it would end up with a bloody American flag on the pump clip!”

Merrick recalls a strong focus on cask beer production. “People couldn’t fathom the idea of putting unfiltered, unpasteurized beers into keg. Nobody thought there would be a market of these beers as they worried about shelf stability and other such issues. There was lots of territory in the world of craft beer to be uncovered at that point.”

Moving south in 2011, she would work at Dark Star in Sussex alongside Mark Tranter who would go on to found Burning Sky Brewery several years later. Roles at Meantime in Greenwich and Camden Town Brewery in North London followed, as well as at Beavertown in Tottenham Hale.

At these breweries Merrick would be part of their growth phases, often helping commission new brewhouse setups along the way. Expertise she could impart in consulting at Gravity Systems where she would go on to work alongside Big Smoke’s head brewer Nick Blake during the commissioning phase.

“Nick has been very loyal to Big Smoke, being the only brewery he has worked at, so it was really rewarding to bring some of my outside experience, coupled with his leadership, to the new setup,” she says. “Together we are a great team.”

One of her early tasks at Big Smoke was to put a brewery-specific financial structure in place. In doing so, working alongside Sarah Elkins, the former head of finance at Beavertown.

“Together, we know what a brewery’s financials should look like,” explains Merrick. “Up until then, things have been quite integrated between the brewery and pub companies, so we’ve been able to unpick it all and demonstrate how a brewery’s accounts should look.”

This side of the role runs alongside her first passion of brewing production. At Big Smoke, Merrick has been gratified to be able to enrol team members into an apprenticeship programme with Nottingham University, a steering committee that she had significant input into several years back.  

“I’m so thrilled to now have staff members who are enrolled in it because I think it’s incredibly fit for purpose and it also generates well qualified people, which to be honest are hard to come by,” she says.

Big Smoke Brew Co produce a range of beers including Solaris Session Pale, Dark Wave Porter, Electric Eye Pale Ale and Cold Spark – a single hop Citra Pale. These complement other releases like Helles, Fruju New England Pale Ale and Mango Moon, a fresh mango Pale Ale.

In the trade, many of these are expertly sold across the UK and Europe by sales director David Tugwell. The brewery’s output also obviously has a home across the pub company’s estate, where they are accompanied by beers from other breweries, too. These are chosen by Katie Arabella, the team’s special projects and beer curation manager.

“It’s important for us to complement the beers we have on offer, but in a way where it’s with people that share our passion for the community and culture of craft beer,” she says. “If we have a beer on the bar, it means that brewery shares our values, they are aligned with us and is the type of business we want to support.”

And alongside guest beers are Big Smoke collaborations. For head brewer Nick Blake, these is often a real highlight of the role. “Working with breweries such as Siren Craft Brew, Thornbridge and recently Maui Brewing Company, shows how far we have come,” he explains. “To be partnering with businesses like theirs really validates what we are doing.”

It’s not just brewing outfits that the company has worked with though. During early periods of lockdown the business, like many others, had its pub kitchens shuttered. 

“The former manager of The Antelope went on to work for a charity in Kingston called Voices for Hope, which focuses on feeding people in need,” says Craig. “We identified pubs close enough to Kingston where we had staff on furlough, staff that were kind enough to volunteer their time to come back to work so we could produce about 10,000 meals for them.”

He adds: “We were also very happy to help out with footballer Marcus Rashford’s school meals initiative. So we just set up an email address and said, if you are in need please just ask and we can sort it.

“We received countless emails from people pouring their hearts out to us. I won’t lie, it was a tough experience having people feel the need to justify why they needed help when they shouldn’t need to.

“We are in a fortunate position, being able to buy quality produce at wholesale, that we could do our bit to help those that need it. When are you part of a community, it’s important to give something back.”

While lockdown enabled Big Smoke to do their bit for the community, it also presented opportunities of a very different kind. With the global pandemic putting a halt to global travel, most business at airports also came to an abrupt stop. But when one door closes….

In May 2021, the company announced it was opening the Big Smoke Taphouse & Kitchen at London Heathrow Airport. The airside destination is a partnership with Airport Retail Enterprises (ARE) and is located at Heathrow Terminal 2. This has been followed by another site at Luton Airport as well as two additional landside bars at Heathrow in the form The Oceanic in Terminal 3 and The Globe in Terminal 5.

“The airports were in a position where they had empty sites that they needed filling pretty fast,” says Craig. “We paid them a visit, realised we were on the same wavelength and came in with the right offer.

“We’re up to four now and there’s potentially more in the pipeline. But if you had told me we’d have 14 pubs as well as running airport bars and restaurants some years back I would have laughed at you!”

Although Craig acknowledges that the industry is entering an uncertain period, he also says the team’s eyes and ears “are always open”, while eight years into the journey, sales director David Tugwell says he is suitably proud of what the team has achieved.

“We’ve all been along part, or all, of this journey,” he says. “I think I’m most proud of how Big Smoke has constantly scaled up but never at the detriment of the quality of the beer or the service we provide.

“You know, I think it’s important to have the right culture at any business, and to approach things with a smile on your face. And I know 100% that we have that here.”