welcome friends welcome back we are not in the kitchen today we are in the
Distillery District in Toronto and we are talking about non-alcoholic beer
non-alcoholic beer so this is big drop brewing please tell me a little bit more
about it okay big drop brewing is the company I started in November 2016
okay was when we released our first beer I for my sins used to be a lawyer
oh yeah for my sins but my job was largely marketing so I met with
clients and I worked in the city of London which has for those who don't
know a very big boozy culture a lot of pubs a lot of bars a lot of restaurants
and my job was to be in those pubs and bars and restaurants all day and a lot
of evenings and then I had my first son 2014 and I just decided for six months
that I would not drink because tiny little baby yeah I want to be a 21st
century dad changed nappies tell bedtime stories give it a bath and frankly you
can't do that if you've been in the pub yes
drinking innumerable pints of beer so I stopped but I love beer
I love craft beer ok great tasting beer and I still had to go out with my
clients I couldn't just say I'm not gonna go to the pub for six months yeah
that was my job terrible job though that sounds so I would go in and in as you
well know we've had a craft beer revolution how many great tasting beers
so many great tasting bill yeah and I'm going into these pubs and I said I'm not
gonna drink any of them and you can get pale ales and lagers and ales and stouts
and everything under the Sun and when I say I'm not drinking can I have a
non-alcoholic beer after they stop laughing there's not much choice they
hand me the mass-produced a macro lager and yeah it's always lager which some of
them are okay some of them aren't very good at all yeah but the point was is
that I don't particularly enjoy lager as a style I drink a few lawyers in the
summer when it's hot yeah but I drink Pale Ales and stamps is my favorite
style of beer
and I just thought to myself hang on a minute you look at these taps these kegs
these bottles in the fridges the innovation that's gone on in beer over
the last 10 15 20 years is is outstanding a huge amount of change and
a lot more focus on flavor and what it tastes like and market segmentation
absolutely making sure that everybody has something that they like exactly
making sure everyone's got something that they like their styles are
available yeah why say I to myself has this not happened in non-alcoholic beer
yeah so I spent time researching it and
looking into it trying all of the different non-alcoholic beers that I
could find and I still couldn't find a good pay lot couldn't find any Pale Ales
but couldn't find any set out so I couldn't find any sort of English sales
that were non-alcoholic and so the short conclusion to that is I decided to do it
myself and so were you were you a brewer
yourself from do home brew no never fine brewed I personally have
never brewed a point of beer in my life concept guy concept guy so cool question
number one can it be done yes has it not been done because you can't
do it as someone who brews at home I find it very hard to brew a low alcohol
beer yeah yeah and I wrote some emails to some brewing consultants there's
plenty of people out there that hold themselves out as brewing consultants
yep and I've saved one email from a guy who wrote back and said I could do this
for you but I'm not going to because I would feel bad taking your money this is
a terrible idea so I've saved that email I haven't I
haven't written back to him yeah but that's some advice I pay you yeah yeah
thank you for the advice but I'll tell you but no you didn't want to do it so
eventually I found and I didn't have the money to build a brewery didn't I need
to go to brewery but eventually I found a company that had set up a great great
concept a small 700 liter kit in a railway arch
in East East End of London I went down to them I know nothing I knew nothing
about how to even sell beer let alone make it that's why I wanted to do a very
small trial runs tests throughs and they said yeah you can you know you pay them
a fee yep you get 700 liters which is about a pallet of beer yep great do you
know anybody who could develop a recipe for me
and they went yeah sure that guy that guy that guy not him okay who's not
other guys at the brewery now okay yeah crazy wild haired bearded guy who went
and spoke to and you could tell immediately he went oh yeah no one's
done that before have they yeah yeah okay let's give it a go okay off he goes
and he develops the first beer that we released was was the stouts and then
which is this one here this one a dark nor yes so in we will not get into the
vagaries of Canadian labeling regulations okay
because even as a lawyer I find that tedious but for reasons cannabis special
Canada is very special I love it deeply but not as regards your label
regulations of young alcoholic beer yep you're not I'm not allowed to call that
a stout even though it is a stout yes we brew it just like normal beer is there
is there is no artificial extraction processes that go on to remove alcohol
from okay just Brutus okay so I think that's an important point yeah this is
brewed at 0.5 yes 4.4 we'd have to tweak you slightly for Canada so it's brewed
at point four it's not it's not brewed full strength and then something is
removed no and and that was the that is a really important distinction between
what we do and what a lot of the other certainly what them big conglomerates
doing cuz they're brewing a full beer and they brew full beer and then you can
heat it which is terrible because it just destroys flavor yeah you can if you
can filter it so you push the beer through a filter and alcohol remains on
one side but of course you also leave flavors and aromas behind as well yeah
you can vacuum distill it which is essentially heating it but because you
heat it in a vacuum you only need to heat it at room
temperature so it doesn't it doesn't mess with the flavors yeah yeah all of
these things kind of work okay if you're making a lager which is that beer that I
was drinking when I'd given up drinking when I hate my son yeah because
don't get me wrong great pills and as we know is one of the greatest tests of the
Brewers skill yep without a doubt but lager because
inherently doesn't have much flavor its crisp its bitter it's dry you can do
those processes without damaging it too much too much you want to make a Pale
Ale it hop aromas if you want to make a you would lose all that and lose all
that all that yeah so we brew it to strength never goes above naught point
four in the process okay we don't use halted fermentation which is another
process that you can use whereby you that would leave it really sweet that
leads it really sweet UEFI can be drinking the water yeah we don't do that
fully brewed the whole process we use a particular strain of yeast and that's
the thing that nobody ever finds out yep which is not very good at converting to
sugar into alcohol it's not it's not an aggressor it's not an aggressive oh yeah
yeah we use less grain to start with less sugar equals less alcohol and we
also add lactose to all of our beers apart from the lager which we don't have
here today because of the lactose is and unfermented sugar is is really replacing
the alcohol to give the beers mouthfeel gives you it fills your mouth with a
with with that feeling that gives you a smile it makes you smile yeah it's that
it's that thing that makes you feel like you've got something okay so I want I I
don't think a lot of people maybe realize that yeast is a very important
part of the process it and most Brewers and distillers have proprietary yeast
yeah and they don't tell anybody what it is and that is the secret sauce that's
the secret sauce that is that is really what what makes this work absolutely
okay one of the difficult or taste the beers
in a moment obviously but this is a sour we were asked all the time can you make
an alcohol free sour so I was very popular beer in the UK I don't know the
extent it was just gaining a try yeah so all the time can you make an alcohol
free so the particular yeast or bacterial strain and sour that makes it
sour is lactobacillus you know all this obviously I'm sure most of you your
viewers do as well that is a very aggressive
yeast show it some sugar Scott all yeah yeah the back yeah doesn't work for us
so we've we've really had a number of iterations of our Sauer and we've landed
it something that you know we unapologetically quite happily called an
entry-level Sauer this is not drinking face like you're sucking eleven and
that's another I guess we'll get to that when we when we start yeah
tasting them and we're gonna we're gonna taste through all of the beers a lot of
breweries a lot of craft breweries really want to make beers that like hit
you with a baseball bat or clean at bat like they want to they want to knock you
out and those aren't those are not entry-level beers those are not beers
that are approachable no are you trying to make approachable beers are you where
are you what do you think you'll and in that in that strata what I always say is
that our beers should be light iterations of the style so you should
drink a beer and understand that what you're drinking is a Pale Ale is that
forest out or whatever yeah you don't drink out there and think you're
drinking a 7% beer and I'm never going to try and convince you that you're
drinking a 7% beer but we have had blind tastings where we put particularly
something like this sit or IPA up against other like three and a half to
four percent you guys in that category yep and just said right try these beers
I like that one I like that one right tell me what you think the ABV Tzar
three four three and a half and then you say that's noir point five and well yeah
so it's very much intended that they are reflective of the style that we're
trying to do okay versions so you are just entering the
Canadian market yes what are the markets are you in obviously the UK so in the UK
we were happily have good distribution in the UK and then the Netherlands good
market for us and Scandinavians so we sell in Norway Sweden and Finland and
Denmark in the Nordics the Nordics a pedantic burlaps
yeah it's the ex lawyer in me we're just about to open up in Australia and we
sell into Hong Kong Singapore and South Korea cool so we have good news global
distribution New Zealand New Zealand I think the opportunities there
okay so just as much as it is anywhere else I think we'll use our Australian
brewing capability to hopefully use that as a springboard into New Zealand yeah
happily go on a business trip to New Zealand where do you see this beer
fitting into the the grander scheme of beer bars pubs I mean it it's a low
alcohol beer but it's not a non-alcoholic beer yeah this isn't a
zero zero percent beer okay it's at point four point five by virtue of the
fact that we produce strength but we see that I personally see it fitting in with
the sort of spectrum of craft beers I always say we make good craft beer and
then I pause that happens to be non-alcoholic so I love beer but I drink
big job but that's that's okay it's a craft beer yeah so my vision my overall
vision for the brand for the beer company is that we should be able to go
into a bar or pub together and you'll order a pint of Guinness my friend ruled
our planet Stella and I'll order a pint a big drop mm-hmm but nobody blinks
nobody minds because we're all just drinking a nice minor bit just having a
beer yeah that's it and and I just I want it to sit in in that so you're
you're positioning yourself as a new category of beer in the pub yeah I think
I think so yeah and and I think more and more
particularly with the on trade what we found in the UK and in Europe is then
this cat who's been led by the off-trail led by supermarkets okay big Maltese are
driving this because they've seen the trends towards people just drinking a
bit less alcohol and they are supporting that I think it's the entrees I can't
speak for Canada it's the on trade in the UK and in
Europe that's being a little bit left behind and still saying we sell beer and
wine wine why do we need to sell anything else and but actually I think
you're getting more demand for this now we are seeing that don't catch up cool
so come on back for the tastings we're going to taste through five
of your offerings five days thanks for stopping by see you again soon
you