Speaker 1 (00:00.162)
Hello everyone and welcome to the My Local Marketer podcast. I'm Maria and today I'm speaking with Cassie Greenman who is, and I'm going to read this because it's a long title, taproom shift manager and brewery and warehouse assistant at Double-Barrelled Brewery. Cassie, thank you for coming on. How are you?

Thank you for having me, I'm good, how are you?

I'm really good, thanks. Could you please just give an introduction to yourself and Double-Barrelled?

Yes, absolutely. So obviously my name is Cassie. I work as the taproom shift manager and also the brewery and warehouse assistant. I found out about Double-Barrelled a few years ago. So whilst I was completing my masters, I was working part-time at Craft Beer Pub back in Swindon and I discovered Parker, which is actually one of our core beers there. And I realized how delicious it was. And basically the opportunity for me arose to move to Reading.

and I knew as soon as that happened I wanted to apply for a job at Double-Barrelled and thankfully I got in so it all worked out nicely. So Double-Barrelled was opened up in 2018 by couple Mike and Lucy. So Mike was a homebrewer and Lucy worked in marketing at the time and basically what they wanted to do back in 2015 before we set this place up was they really wanted to make something special basically as a wedding favour for their guests.

Speaker 2 (01:20.994)
So they brewed their first ever beer in their garage in Caversham together, gave it out as a wedding favour and they received some really, really lovely feedback from it. And what they realised from this experience of making something together and giving it to their friends and family was how much they loved working together. So they decided to go on a years long trip around the world and basically discover as much as they could about beer. And before that they had picked up some part time jobs along the way as well, in pubs, in some breweries, just to get as much experience as possible.

and then they found this same site here that we are in today. Opened it up in November 2018, so every November now we have a really lovely big birthday party. Yeah, we've been going ever since.

I really like the fact that this whole business started just as a wedding favor. So this little passion and something they did together turned into a really successful business. And for those of you who aren't familiar with Double-Barreled, we are just on Pullman Road in Reading West.

Yes, so a little bit out of town, but you can always get the number 17. Also, we've recently got the 18 bus that stops just outside of the brewery as well.

You've obviously mentioned there two or three different roles. So what do you do at Double Bowled? What are your roles now?

Speaker 2 (02:35.246)
It's bit of a mix. So very recently I was promoted to be shift manager. Prior to that I was the taproom supervisor. I'm also, as I said, the brewery and warehouse assistant. And basically all of these three different things I will do throughout my week. So obviously as a shift manager I need to make sure the rotor is working correctly. I need to make sure I do all of the orders for the things that we need. So the external things, so things like wine, soft drinks and things like that. Also the ordering for the taproom.

Obviously making sure my customers are okay, making sure my team is okay and everyone's comfortable and as they should be. And also I work in the brewery as well. So often I will help to run the canning line. I will help to keg some of the beers when they're ready to be packaged. I can help with the brewery like in the actual brew days itself. And often I will pick orders for trade customers. So we have...

Quite a lot of trade customers in Reading in the surrounding area, so for example, Blue Collar Corner, that's actually all of our beers that they sell there. We also are in Fox and Hounds, Nags Head, Grey Fries quite a lot, sometimes Biscuit Factory, there's so many places in Reading that we're actually available in now. As well as, of course, supermarkets as of last year. So we got into Waitrose, Tesco's and John Lewis, so...

We're all quite busy at the moment trying to make sure that we have all of the beer we need and that we're picking everything perfectly, making sure all of the stock is managed and everything like that. So yeah, it's quite a very varied role that I have every single day that genuinely is something different.

It does sound like a fascinating combination of roles that you've got. And as I said before we started recording, I don't know how you got into sort of Waitrose and Tesco's, how you sort of can produce, because obviously everything is you confirmed is still produced here at Double Bow. It's not as if it's outsourced or anything. So how you can suddenly up from supplying Biscuit Fractury and Blue Collar to supplying Waitrose and Tesco's on that sort of level, that is a whole leap in productivity.

Speaker 2 (04:41.966)
Yes, exactly. It has been a crazy couple of years. I'm not sure if we ever really expected it, but to go from no supermarkets in 2023 to 2024, being in three, it's been mad. obviously the growth in the productivity that we have here has been insane. But it's also been pretty amazing as well, because we're still a fairly small team. I believe there's only 12 of us who work here full time.

as well as some part-time casual staff who help run the tap room as well. So yeah, we are still very much a microbrewery. We only make 1.3 million pints in a year, which I know sounds like a lot, but compare this to somewhere like Carling, who I think make 1.8 million pints in a day. We are still very much a micro-scale brewery. So we are very, very small. I think lots of people have the assumption that because we're in the supermarkets now, we must be quite a big name in the brewing world. But actually we are still, we're still very young.

Thank you very much for that comparison of numbers because I think that really helps to put in perspective that the difference between micro-brewing and someone like Carling. For those of us who aren't familiar, myself included, what is the brewing process like? How do you make a beer from start to finish? How long does it take?

the brewers have their recipe all together and they've decided on a beer style that they would like to make and we've chosen the name. We can then go into working out what we want to do for the marketing, what we want to do for the colours and the keg lenses and our can designs and things like that. But if we're talking the actual brewing process, basically we need to make sure we have all of our ingredients together. So first of all we need to break up all of the malt that we have shipped in.

So we have something called a grist case and this is where the malt will be poured in. It will then be grounded up into something called grist, which is essentially just grounded up malts. We primarily use barley, but we can also use other different types of malts in there as well, depending on the recipe. So we've been known to use sometimes oats, maybe rye, things like that. Again, just completely dependent on the recipe. So once the malt has been grounded up, we then need to mix it with hot water. During this process, it's called lautering.

Speaker 2 (06:52.298)
where the hot water is mixed with the malt, it releases a liquid called wort and this is basically a very sweet liquid. It almost tastes a little bit like Horlicks to me. You can drink it, although I wouldn't advise it. It's very, very sweet. Basically during this process as well, the whole brewery will smell like porridge because that's exactly where it is. It's just lots of malt mixed with hot water, so it smells delicious in the mornings. When we have drawn out all of the wort liquid, this will be the base of our beer.

Obviously we have a massive, massive vessel and this is called the mash tun. So this is where we actually will mix the malt with the hot water. Once we've drawn out all of the worked liquid, we need to get rid of all the malt that's stored in there. So this is just wet, soggy malt at the moment. We basically pick all of this out, we dig it all out and then we give it to our local farmer who uses it to feed his cows. So there's no actual wastage in this process. Most breweries will do that as well.

After this step, once we have collected all of the wort that we need, we need to boil the wort just to get rid of any nasty bacteria that may have gone into the wort during the boiling process. We don't want any of that in there. We also, at this stage, will add our hops into the beer. So, some breweries will do this slightly differently. If you add hops into the beginning of the boiling process, you'll come out with some lovely, bitter tasting notes, but it will lose quite a lot of the aromas.

Whereas if you add hops at the end of the boiling process, you will be left with quite an aromatic liquid, but there won't be as much bitterness to it. So we actually do it both times here. So once the wort has done boiling, we then need to transfer it over to one of our fermentation vessels. And this is where the beer will be cooled down, it will be stored, and then we can add our yeast to it as well. And obviously the yeast is an active ingredient.

So this is where it starts to eat up all of the sugars from the wort. It then produces, obviously, alcohol and then CO2. So we can add other things in the fermentation vessels as well. We like to double dry hop our beers quite a lot and this is basically where we add even more hops into the fermentation vessel after the boiling process. If we're making sour beers as well, we can also add things like fruit to it. Again, lots of different things, sometimes vanilla.

Speaker 2 (09:10.338)
We like to keep our beers vegan usually, but sometimes we do add lactose to a couple of our beers, just depending on the recipe. After this, we are then ready to package once the beer has finished fermenting. So ales and pale ales usually take around sort of two weeks. Lagers usually take around sort of four weeks time. So again, completely depends. The type of yeast that you get as well is also dependent, and that's the difference between the lager and a pale ale for those of you who are interested.

is that you will have a certain type of yeast for lager which ferments at colder temperatures hence why it takes a little bit longer for it to brew because it doesn't have the heat to sort of kickstart the process as much and for pale ale the yeast actually ferments at warmer temperatures and it's another different style of yeast that works better just with more hotter temperatures so it only takes around two weeks or so to ferment so it's a lot quicker to brew a pale ale than it takes to brew a lager and then obviously after that we're ready to package it into our cans and into our kegs

and then we can ship it out or we can use it into the taproom.

What I find really interesting is it sounds like it's a very small number of ingredients that's actually used in order to make a pale ale or a beer or lager, anything like that. So where do you actually source the ingredients from and how do you choose them?

Honestly, it completely depends. So a lot of our malt we get from either Crisp Malt, who are based in Norfolk I believe, and sometimes we Simpson's Malt and they're based in Norwich. Hops are grown all around the world. So at Double-Barrelled we actually like to use a lot of, they're called Starburst Hops. These are basically from places like Australia and they're quite tropical. We like to use the more sort of New England style hops that you get. So these will be hops with notes of sort of passion fruit.

Speaker 2 (10:56.172)
maybe pineapple, guava, like that. Some from New Zealand, again some from Australia, South America sometimes. Our suppliers are Yakima Chief and Charles Farham we use quite a lot as well. Again, we've been experimenting with a couple of different yeasts recently. So the yeast that we use for Parker, I believe is called London Pale 3. I could be wrong there, but that means it's from London. We've also, as I said, been experimenting with a new yeast.

for one of our sours recently, our Amalfi Lemur cake sour, and that one is called a Philly yeast, which means that it was basically grown in a university lab in Philadelphia. So again, our sort of ingredients can be sourced from all around the world really, just depending on what sort of recipe we'd like to make. Obviously we like to use local wherever possible. So for example, we brewed a beer called the Speedy Whippet a few years ago.

And this was basically a variation on one of our sort of semi-flagship beers, Whippet. And in this one, we've added Anonymous Coffee, who are obviously very local to Reading. So it's basically like an extra vanilla-y version of Whippet, and that went down really, really well. We've also been experimenting with making some beer cocktails recently also. So Becky and I, Becky's my taproom supervisor. We've been working for a few months on developing these recipes, and we actually used

Tal has honey as well to go into the cocktails.

speed you whip it. That's a great note. Now, what are some of your most popular beers then? You've got many, she said, and I love the fact that you keep experimenting, which I think you need to do in order to keep ahead of the game.

Speaker 2 (12:35.854)
Yes! So Parker would definitely be our best seller and funnily enough it was actually the first beer that Mike and Lucy ever brewed in here when they opened up in 2018. So Parker we're really really proud of obviously that's the one that is in John Lewis Waitrose and Tesco's now. Yeah definitely our best seller, it's won quite a lot of awards. We treat the recipe over the years to make it the best version of what it could be. It's definitely my favorite pale ale of all time.

And I'm not just saying that because I work here, I genuinely mean it. I think second to Parker would probably be the Ding Lager. So if you don't already know, the ding is named after the good people of Redding. So it's basically just like an ode to the community here. It's a German Keller Lager. So it's 4.9 % and it's actually unpasteurized and unfiltered. Keller is actually the German word for cellar. So essentially what this means is that the lager, so the Ding Lager, is just straight from the cellar.

So it's unprocessed, essentially.

Hear hear for giving Reading a shout out. Now, I personally don't drink alcohol, but you do say you have some non-alcoholic ones as well, don't you? We do.

Yes, yeah absolutely.

Speaker 2 (13:46.098)
Yes, so in the tap room we always stock some non-alcoholic beer. We also always have soft drinks on so there's always options for anyone who's wanting to come down. We were also thinking about potentially releasing a non-alcoholic version of one of our beers. It's still in the works but yeah hopefully in the future that would be a very real possibility. It does take a little bit longer to actually brew a non-alcoholic beer from scratch.

because basically you have to brew the beer and then take all of the alcohol out. There are always lots of options whenever you come down to the tap room now so if you don't like beer or you don't drink at all don't worry there's always something here for you to try.

and it's a lovely atmosphere as well. Thank you. So what are some of the challenges that you faced whilst you've been working at Double-Barrelled?

think it's the hospitality industry as a whole. Unfortunately, sexism is still very much a real thing. Obviously, it's not the only issue, but I'd say as a woman working in craft beer, it does happen. I'm very fortunate to work in a place that is incredibly inclusive. Our clientele is so lovely, but obviously as a woman, as I said, you are almost guaranteed to have some kind of sexist comment made towards you, which...

It's a massive shame, but it is the truth. I've had people say to me things like, why would I order a beer in a two thirds? That's a girly sized drink. And I go to explain to them, well, it's due to pricing. And then they just cut me off. They order a pint and then they complain about the price. I've had someone say to me, this is actually in the last place that I used to work at, not here. A gentleman came up to me and asked me for a beer. Before I could even respond,

Speaker 2 (15:31.714)
He turned to my male colleague and said, actually don't worry, I'll ask him. He looks like he knows what he's talking about. Luckily my male colleague was really good about it. He was like, Cassie is more than capable of serving you. She can recommend you a beer easily. Just things like that, it's the assumptions we find a lot. On a more positive note though, I will say that every International Women's Day is always incredible. We always like to try and make it into a nice big event. So a couple of years back we actually

we try and do this as much as we can where we have a brew day and essentially anyone is welcome to come in and we brew a beer for International Women's Day and we have a nice big event on. think we did a, what was it? It was a secret burlesque show in the evening. So we had the Scarlet Vixens who I think usually down at the Purple Turtle, a burlesque group. So yeah, we always like to celebrate it. We always like to release a lovely beer celebrating all the wonderful women in beer.

Thank you for sharing your experience there. I mean, I don't drink alcohol, but if you work in a brewery, I'd say the assumption is you know what the product is because you work in a brewery and you sell it even if you don't drink it. So I think, like you said, having a really inclusive workplace and the clientele though, that really helps. So you can't do anything about sexist assumptions, but having people around you who do support you and encourage your development, I think that is super important. That's what you can control. And I think what you've done very well.

So Reading, we've talked about the present, now let's move to the past. So Reading was known for biscuits, beer and bulbs. Now I've not really looked into this before, but can you give a bit of background as to the beer part of that?

Absolutely, so Reading obviously has a very long history of beer. So first of all, we had the Simmons Brewery who obviously there were breweries here before Simmons, but actually they were probably the biggest powerhouse in Reading. So they set up in 1785 I believe it was by the founder William Simmons. Within 20 years, they had already had 10 pubs in the region. They then

Speaker 2 (17:42.072)
basically started supplying to the Royal Military College in Sandhurst. From there, they started to supply beer to the British Army. So they actually experimented with pale ale's. So they're, don't know if you've seen their logo, but their logo is basically like a hop leaf. Where they were sending beer over to the British Army, these would go to places like India and Malta. So basically, this little tiny brewery that started out in Reading started to grow all around the world. There's actually still

a Simmons Brewery in Malta. So again, like I said, a really, really big player in the three Bs. In the 1960s it was, and they were going really, really well, and then they amalgamated with Courage Brewery. Eventually, it just became Courage Brewery. Unfortunately, they are now closed down. Luckily today, we have so many different breweries in Reading as well, obviously not just us. You've got Phantom, Elusive, Siren nearby.

Renegades, Lodden, Delphic, Dolphin, Zero Degrees, there's so many around. yeah, Reading, the community of craftbrewers here is amazing. It really has boomed and I hope to see it grow even further.

Well, I said time stops for no one, so although Simmons and Courage are no longer here, mean, they've clearly left a legacy for others to follow. Is there anything that modern brewers can learn from Simmons and Courage?

It's always really good to evolve. I mean, obviously as we sort of talked about even our expansion at Double-Barrelled, we've only been here, is our sixth year we've been here, it will be seventh in November. But the amount of expansion that we've seen has been insane. It's very important to evolve and adapt. I think COVID especially sort of hit the industry so hard. Unfortunately, you do see a lot of craft breweries closing down because the effects of it are still going on today.

Speaker 2 (19:39.602)
everyone in this industry is struggling a fair amount. So as I said it's always good to evolve, adapt and change and sort of just try and experiment as much as you can. See what works for you, whether it's creating a different recipe, whether it's adding something different to your tap room if you have one. I would probably say the most important thing that we can learn from the past is probably leaning on your community. As I said we have such an amazing craft beer community here and it's so important I think to lean on one another to

help each other, not necessarily see each other as competitors. I know it's hard not to sometimes, but I think things like doing more collaborations, helping each other if some person's equipment is broken, doing more sort of beer festivals and things like that where you invite all of the other local breweries and you can all sort of hang out together. I think it genuinely is a really, really lovely, solid community in Reading, the craft beer scene. So I feel quite privileged to be a part of that, actually.

A couple of very valuable lessons there from the past then. So first of all, it's adapt to survive. And second of all, lean into your community and help each other, even, know, quote unquote, competitors. Now, if anyone's interested in learning more about brewing and double-bald in general, do you have any resources or anything you can point them towards?

Absolutely, so I know the Reading Amateur Brewers group actually meets once a month. They're really, really friendly. New faces are always welcome there. So if home brewing is something you wanted to get into, that's a really good resource. They're on all the socials as well. There's also a podcast called A Women's Brew run by Two Women and they basically talk about lots of different and exciting beers to try. So if beer is something you'd like to get into and you haven't quite tried that much of it yet, it's always really good because they talk through some of the tasting notes.

Yeah, it's just a really great podcast if you want to get into just trying more beers in general. There's also the Count Me In Collective. The Count Me In Collective is based in Castle Tap in town. They are basically setting up a nano brewery to help people who are neurodiverse, if they might have learning difficulties or physical disabilities, basically to help people get into brewing and also to train them hospitality skills. So it's a really, really good cause. Give them a shout if you're interested in something like that.

Speaker 2 (21:55.574)
And also, if you ever have any questions at all, Double-Barrelled is always here. Everyone here is super friendly and super knowledgeable as well. So if you have any questions at all, please feel free to ask anytime.

Yes, I can confirm everyone here is exceedingly friendly. So yes, any questions and please send them through. And as always, everyone, all the links and downloads will be on the episode landing page if you're interested. Now, is there anything that you'd like to leave our listeners with?

double-barrelled. We always have lots of different events on here. We do comedy nights, we have indie markets, we're starting a Lego club, a dog walking club, there's a running club and there's always so much on we do quizzes and again it's not just for people who love beer it's also very family friendly. We have multiple different options if anyone didn't want to try the beer but also if you do love beer please please please come down I promise you you won't regret it. It's a lovely community hub here.

and we're really, really proud of it. So we'd to see all of your faces down here soon, hopefully.

Wonderful Cassie, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I've thoroughly enjoyed talking to you and yes, get on down here to Double Power Brokery.

Speaker 2 (23:06.67)
Okay.