If enthusiasm and passion can be used as a measure of success, then expect great things of Burton’s newest brewery and pub venture. It’s been nigh on a decade since the town centre welcomed a new brewer, so the foundation of the Outwoods Brewing Company and the adjacent tap room is cause for celebration.
The chap behind this is Colin Trowell, who has been a keen home brewer since May 2020; here is a man chasing his dreams and he is prepared to make massive sacrifices to realise them. Since taking on the lease in early March he has been working seven days a week to convert two derelict railway arches into his brewery and pub.
“What I want to do is make a unique experience,” says Colin sitting in the partially finished bar, “so it’s not a brewery which has a pub, it’s a pub that has a brewery. I’ve got a lot of ideas in the pipeline, but I need a starting block to get going. Ideally, I want to get more into brewing, but I had to put a pub in so I can make revenue because the free trade market doesn’t exist anymore. Unless you’ve got a ten-barrel system, which is going to cost a fortune, the big breweries just dominate it.
“This is my market, my own pub, there’s no way I could sell to third parties. I’ve looked at the pricing and it doesn’t work unless you’re making 100 Firkins with fifteen quid profit on each, if you’re making ten it’s not a lot, but if you’re like me making two like me …”
Colin is operating on the smallest scale possible, a nano brewery: “I brew half a barrel which is 54 litres, which produces 90 pints per batch. I can take risks and if it doesn’t work out, I’ve only spent 15kg worth of grain and hops. I want to do a lot of collaborations with other brewers because I’ve got such a small system, we can just play about with it especially experimenting with newly released hops. They can go back to their bigger breweries and brew on a grander scale. This is a pilot system, so breweries can come down and take a gamble.”
In the last few years Colin has built up a wide range of recipes to choose from.
“As it’s such small batches, I can do anything, I can have five beers fermenting per week so in a month I can technically brew twenty different beers.”
That said, the plan is to eventually have a core range, but this is very much still to be decided, and this will be decided by customer feedback.
“I’m my worst critic, a perfectionist,” admits Colin. “If I won’t drink it, I wouldn’t expect anyone else to. I used to be a Stock Auditor, then I kind of decided to start home brewing. I spent a good six months planning it all out initially but didn’t start off in plastic barrels, I went stainless steel all the way. The first brew was really good, second one too. I’ve had six failures out of 250 batches but I know why, it was the yeast. That being said now I have my core yeast strain which hasn’t failed me yet.”
When asked what he thinks will sell well, he is the first to admit that he doesn’t know.
“Redwood Original, a 5% American Red,” he suggests immediately, before describing a citra beer he’s recently brewed that isn’t quite on point and needs a few tweaks.
“Until customers come in,” he paused. “I can’t make up my mind. I could suggest beers, but it’d be completely wrong, everyone’s taste is different which is one the best things about beer.”
Outwoods Brewing Company will be producing both cask and keg beers, but also intend to explore the area that bridges between the two.
“I’ll be doing cask when the cold room is up and running, keg is a lot safer because it is a sealed vessel, it’s a bit like a bottle conditioned beer. It’s got yeast in it and it’s lively and active, but you’re not losing it to oxygen, it’ll keep for six months. What I want to do is fill the gap in between keg and cask. They aren’t hazy beers everything’s got to be clear, clean flavours, not wacky prices or ABV. It’s just normal beer but it’s in keg, it’s just how I dispense it.
“Most of my beers are around the 4% mark, I’ll have three handpulls and eight taps but the pricing is pretty much going to be the same, probably looking at about four quid a pint for up to 5%, if it’s 5.5% it may be £4.50.”
Colin isn’t a fan of the high prices charged for keg beers and he intends to challenge this head-on: “The craft market is coming down now, I think people are fed up paying astronomical prices. My keg is nearly cask, but the price isn’t keg, I’m not going to stick another quid or quid fifty on the price. It’s a little bit colder than cask it’s not over carbonated, it’s a new market.”
In practical terms Colin doesn’t see himself being able to brew enough beer to meet demand so will be serving guest beers.
“I’ll always have Tower Bitter on,” he says, John Mills from Tower Brewery has helped Colin out a lot in realising his ambitions this far. “Dancing Duck, Ashover, Shiny, Abbeydale, Muirhouse if they want to …”
The tap room, which will probably be known as The Arches, will open the first week of July:
Tuesday to Thursday 15:00 – 20:00
Friday & Saturday 12:00 – 2200
Sunday 13:00 – 18:00
Unit 21-22, Station Street Yard, Burton upon Trent, DE14 1AZ.