Patrick Whittle 33:09
From farmer to Brewer. It’s time for this week’s Five Minutes with Faram. This time we’re down in Gloucestershire interviewing Brewer Ben from Stroud brewery on his favourite hops beer and what’s next for him in the industry.

Ben Jennison-Phillips 33:21
So I’m Ben Jennison Phillips. I’ve been here at Stroud for nearly five years now, and this year is my 20th year as a brewer.

Patrick Whittle 33:30
Oh, very nice. Where’d you start?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 33:32
So I started a little brewery called Whittington’s, which was part of Three Choirs Vineyard that was on the second of January, 2004 and then since then, I’ve worked fairly locally in Cheltenham, Pershore in Worcestershire, and up in Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire as well. So this is my fifth brewery.

Patrick Whittle 33:52
Is his favourite brewery?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 33:56
One of the things I like about here is definitely the variety of things we do. Some of the others were just cask or just lager, whereas here we do a bit of everything, so you can get your teeth into all sorts of different things.

Patrick Whittle 34:09
Yeah, it sounds really good. So the first question our Five Minutes with Faram segment is, what’s your favourite hop?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 34:14
My favorite hop, I think at the moment, one that I’m quite liking is our organic Harlequin®. Being organic brewers, we have had in the past a little bit of a restriction on how many hops we can use, and obviously that affected what sorts of beers we could produce with everybody liking American flavours and big fruity hops. Having a UK Harlequin® now available to us just means that you know, a couple of our beers have really lifted, and I think that’ll go quite well for us. So

Patrick Whittle 34:44
Very nice, what would be, what gives some names of some beers where you’ve used that Harlequin®?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 34:49
Well, so far, we’ve just used it in one beer, our Oaty pale, which we’ve just brewed last week, brewed it once last year, because there was only 12 kilos available organically.

Patrick Whittle 34:57
Right

Ben Jennison-Phillips 34:58
So hopefully, as production increases production of the hop increases we’ll get more available to us, so we’ll be able to use it in more things.

Patrick Whittle 35:06
Yeah, definitely, from like Farams point of view, is obviously, when we’re getting all this positive feedback about these different experimental varieties, we’re only going to keep pushing them through

Ben Jennison-Phillips 35:14
Yeah hopefully, and hopefully, you know, with us being just organic as well, you know, yeah, hopefully that will grow and then we’ll be able to to use more of it. Yeah, no, definitely.

Patrick Whittle 35:24
So what would you say your favourite beer is, or beer style is, or

Ben Jennison-Phillips 35:28
That we make, or in general?

Patrick Whittle 35:30
Well, you can, you can give one from Stroud. You can give one from anywhere else. For example,

Ben Jennison-Phillips 35:34
I think for a few years now, I grew up in Sheffield and had real ale force down my throat all the time. So those sorts of beers, you know, just traditional bitter is what we had as when I was younger. But now I think I really appreciate sort of a decent Heller’s lager, things like that, just now that I know how difficult they are to make, but how varied they can be as well. So our LOL is that sort of style recently won the SIBA award, and that’s that’s going great guns. So that’s probably my favourite at the moment.

Patrick Whittle 36:12
Very nice. What about a beer from a different brewery?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 36:16
In our local, local area, I always look out for Wye Valley or Salopian But recently, I’ve had a couple of great Bristol Beer Factory beers as well. I really enjoy They’re Notorious when I see it in town. So yeah, those sorts of cask ales and those guys do go down really well.

Patrick Whittle 36:33
Very nice. So when you’re drinking, for example, the LOL beer you just mentioned, what would you pair that with? Food wise?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 36:40
Well, if I have it here, I’d have it here, I’ll have it with just our standard Margarita Pizza in our tap room. So, yeah, beer and pizza the classic?

Patrick Whittle 36:47
Yeah? Definitely, to be fair, most of our answers that question is that is proper, hearty foods, like pizzas, burgers. Yeah, I’ve had cheese as well. Okay, cheese pairs well trends to be darker beers. Yeah, what we’ve found out. But yeah, no. Good choice. Enjoy that. So have you got a favourite pub in the world, one that you’ve been to, or

Ben Jennison-Phillips 37:05
Favourite pub? I’ve been to, quite a few, comes with the job. Really, it does. It does. I mean, I quite enjoyed some of the pubs in the Forest of Dean down on the River Wye. Yeah. There’s a few down, down in Simmons Yat that are just really nice for looking over the water. Holiday vibe. But whenever I go back home to visit the folks, there’s a couple of great pubs near us in a place called Chapeltown.

Patrick Whittle 37:33
Okay

Ben Jennison-Phillips 37:34
So, yeah, I always like to go out down there. The Commercial is a good place

Patrick Whittle 37:41
I ever find myself in Sheffield, I have to make sure to visit some of these. So sort of moving on from pubs. Have you been to many, like beer festivals, or?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 37:51
There’s a few locally. CAMRA, do the Cotswold beer festival? Yeah, we’re always at that. Tewkesbury just had the winter ales festival as well. That’s quite a good one. #

Patrick Whittle 38:00
Where’s that in Tewkesbury?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 38:02
It’s at the Watson Hall on the high street.

Patrick Whittle 38:03
Oh, I know, yeah,

Ben Jennison-Phillips 38:05
So, so, yeah, I tend to go to just local ones a couple of times through work. I’ve been to the GBBF in London, but I find those a little bit much. They’re just a bit too busy. I prefer something a bit smaller,

Patrick Whittle 38:17
yeah, a bit more sort of intimate local,

Ben Jennison-Phillips 38:19
yeah, I guess. And also, prefer stuff that’s got our beers on there, or stuff that I know, rather than stuff from absolutely everywhere. So

Patrick Whittle 38:27
Yeah, and you get a better connection with the beer then if you know where it’s come from, yeah, or you know, sort of the brewer that’s brewed it, or whatever, I think there’s almost bit more meaning behind it.

Ben Jennison-Phillips 38:35
I think also, as well, with the local breweries, is that the people who are there engage with you more as a local brewer. So if we were at the GBBF, 99% of people probably never heard of Stroud brewery or anything like that. Whereas, if we’re at a Gloucestershire festival, people are interested in what you’re doing. And so yeah, you get a bit more engagement that way.

Patrick Whittle 38:55
Yeah, no, definitely. So obviously, we’re sat in your brewery today. What would you say? One item you can’t live without in the brewery.

Ben Jennison-Phillips 39:05
Squeegee done,

Patrick Whittle 39:07
just for cleaning. Yeah, yeah.

Ben Jennison-Phillips 39:10
Just get the floors done. Get everything sorted. Yeah. 90% of our job is cleaning but, but yeah. It’s really satisfying at the end of the day, squeegee the floor down, feel like you’ve cleaned up, done. You can leave then,

Patrick Whittle 39:24
yeah, that’s yeah, like you said, satisfying job, isn’t it? Yeah. I guess if you then come in the next morning, it’s all nice pristine ready to start brewing again that’s what we want isn’t it. And so when you are brewing and not cleaning, yeah, do you have you got any, like, playlists you put on, any podcasts, any radio stations, or

Ben Jennison-Phillips 39:41
We always have, if just a general day brewing, pottering about, we’ve always just got Six Music on, yeah, just because it’s got a variety of tunes for everybody to listen to. If we’re canning, then I’ve always got proper hardcore trance and rave on, just to get us through canning. So boring. So having the tunes on just. Gets you through

Patrick Whittle 40:00
A bit high pace, is it your playlist?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 40:03
I tend to pick up all the CDs from the charity shops. So if I see sort of, you know, old compilation ones or anything, then yeah, I’ll just pick those up.

Patrick Whittle 40:14
You sort of protect them. So yeah, your type of music?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 40:16
Yeah, Ministry of House, 1998 a Mystery of Sound. Sorry, I should say 1998

Patrick Whittle 40:22
High intense stuff. Yeah. So if you weren’t in brewing, obviously, as you mentioned, you’ve been in brewing for 20 years. Did you do anything different before or ?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 40:31
Or so, the first brewery I was at was based at Three Choirs vineyards. So before that, I did wine making and worked at a wine trade. So I done wine for about eight or nine years before I’d started on working in their brewery,

Patrick Whittle 40:44
Yep

Ben Jennison-Phillips 40:45
So I possibly would have stuck with that my whole working life’s just been in booze basically.

Patrick Whittle 40:54
No, I love that. That’s brilliant. So, yeah, so very much sort of around the alcohol side of things didn’t have any sort of, have you got any other hobbies or interests outside of brewing?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 41:00
I sort of quite, I quite like outdoorsy stuff. I think doing something like, say, a Cotswold Ranger, or working at a national trust property, fixing old things, repairing fences, a bit of gardening, just something outdoors. I’ve never worked in an office, and I’d like to do something just varied and hands on really well. I

Patrick Whittle 41:20
Guess being a brewer is a big physical job, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s a lot of sort of manual labour, lugging stuff about.

Ben Jennison-Phillips 41:25
So yeah, but it has the variety of doing the sort of sciency stuff and or the social side, tasting, pubs, etc. So yeah, it has a good variety.

Patrick Whittle 41:34
Do you find you do a lot of, like, recipe development here?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 41:37
Um, not so much recently, because we’ve got a fairly set series of beers. But in the last year or so, we have started to do what we call ‘In the Brewers’ series. So there’s four of us brewers here between us, we sort of play with some of those recipes. So for example, in the summer, we’re planning on doing a Kolsch beer for the first time. Last year, we did a sour beer for the first time. So we do do a little bit. I haven’t done it personally for a little while, because some of the guys are sort of more interested in other styles, so they’ve, they’ve taken on the recipes. But

Patrick Whittle 42:15
Do you do that on your pilot kit?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 42:17
We’ve done both really, the pilot kit we’ve done a few sort of test brews and sort of trial hop brews for you guys as well. A couple of the brews we just went straight in full 20 barrels. But yeah, that’s that’s what pilot kits for, test them out and try and scale it up.

Patrick Whittle 42:35
Happy days. So do you have any sort of big inspirations in brewing that could be like a previous boss, or someone you big brewery, or?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 42:45
Most of the stuff that I’ve done, I sort of learnt on the job from people that I’ve worked with. I did enjoy my time working at Cotswold Brewery now Hawkstone. Yeah, I learned a lot about lager there. I was lucky enough to travel to Germany for the big trade fairs over there. So, you know, in Munich and Nuremberg, seeing all the proper breweries and the way proper lagers made and things like that was that was pretty good. And we’ve brought that to here to make our lagers now. So I think that’s definitely stuck with me the guys from Cotswold.

Patrick Whittle 43:20
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Really nice. So what got you into brewing?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 43:25
I said, I was at Three Choirs Vineyard, and they didn’t need quite so many of us in the winery. The harvest was over. Obviously, grapes just picked one time of the year, and that’s that. And so they wanted somebody sort of relatively sensible to look after the brewery for a little while. So I just, literally, I was looking at the same place, but just moved across into look, you know, starting their brewery properly, it was more of a hobby or a side, a side hustle for them at the time. And so I took it on, doing sales and brewing and delivering and so it was to begin with, yeah, we started it off like that, and then that just carried on really

Patrick Whittle 44:09
Happy days. So just a few sort of quick fire questions just to sort of wrap up the conversation. So what was the last beer you brewed?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 44:16
I brewed our Hopdrop yesterday.

Patrick Whittle 44:18
Very nice. What hops are in that?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 44:21
That’s got Motueka from New Zealand, El Dorado, and then a bit of Citra and Equinox in the dry hop.

Patrick Whittle 44:29
Very nice. And Fuggles, or Goldings?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 44:34
I’ve not used either of them for about 15 years. Oh, so Golding would be my initial reaction.

Patrick Whittle 44:42
Okay, let’s reword the question then, what would be one hop that would be your go to?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 44:51
At the moment, we’re using Brewers Gold as our bittering base, so that’s giving us a good, solid starting point. Most of our our sort of regular cask beers. Yeah, it’s got good Alpha it’s got a lovely aroma, and that’s working really well for us at the moment.

Patrick Whittle 45:08
Happy days, it’s not broke don’t fix it, I guess. And what’s next for you in the industry?

Ben Jennison-Phillips 45:15
For me personally, we’re just keeping on, keeping on. We’re just, you know, we’re getting busier coming into spring and summer. Yeah, we’re doing a few new beers. We’re trying to develop some more of our seasonals. So, yeah, that’s us really

Patrick Whittle 45:33
Happy days, So that concludes our Five Minutes with Faram. So thank you to Ben from Stroud Brewery for taking part.

Ben Jennison-Phillips 45:39
Cheers Paddie