Since officially opening their doors in 2019, the team at Duration Brewing have gone on to establish the business as one of the UK’s finest breweries. Here the brewery’s co-founder Miranda Hudson shares her experiences of running a business, the ethos and values she adheres to, and how a normal day and week might look when helping steer the ship of the revered Norfolk brewery. Photography from: Duration Brewing, James Beeson, Chris Coulson, Henry Muller, Mark Newton and Theresa Undine.
Hello, I’m Miranda Hudson from Duration Brewing in Norfolk.
Six years ago, I took a complete leap of faith opening a modern farmhouse brewery with Bates my husband, our head brewer. A move that radically changed my life. I’d like to share some insights about what it’s like running a small, passion-based business and what a typical week looks like. Before I jump in here’s a little background on me and Duration…
Our values and beers
Our ethos is simple – to make good beer, with good people, in a way that respects where we are. Being on a farm we appreciate the changing seasons. Seeing the swathes of bluebells in spring with the lambs, to the poppies in summer and as harvest starts coming in.
As a former city girl, it’s utterly re-enchanting and it inspires a lot of our brew. Herbs, flowers, botanicals and fruit often find their way into recipes as well as all the local grains that are grown and malted here.
We brew fresh modern beers and wild ales, across a broad range of styles. Hop forward pale ales, IPAs, crisp lagers, rich stouts and classic European styles form our fresh Everyday Range.
Our Fermata Range of mixed fermentation beers are slower to make – wild ales brewed in the Lambic-Style with great flavour complexity and a distinctly tart character. Focused on sustainability, all of our spent grain goes back to farmers – we feed a wagyu herd, sheep and pigs and help a local blueberry farmer with our spent hops.
Say yes to everything
When asked to discuss my role whether for a podcast, press article, or in a public talk, I’m always honoured and slightly surprised. I’m not a brewer and this is my first gig in the industry!
Regardless, I say yes and never shy away from sharing the obstacles as well as the wins. It’s more real and more interesting to give the whole picture.
I’ve given talks on how it is being a woman in the industry (I like it) and how I navigate my own mental health challenges (I’m bipolar), to how it’s been operating on a knives edge opening right before Brexit and Covid.
The beginning
Back in 2018 after many months of meticulous research, planning, and fundraising, Bates and I moved to the countryside from London to set about building Duration.
While Bates is a seasoned commercial brewer, but I had no prior experience in the industry. I had run several small businesses before, and my background is in property development – which certainly came in in handy.
We’re located on Abbey Farm in West Acre, Kings Lynn close to the North Norfolk coast. Our site is on the grounds of a 10th century priory, set in stunning ancient woodlands and farmlands.
It’s not only an SSSI (site of special scientific interest) and one of 134 scheduled monument sites in the UK (think Big Ben, Stone Henge), we are also in a conservation area and the buildings themselves are grade II* listed.
The entire process was a colossal undertaking, not just financially but emotionally but we are so pleased we did all the hard work up front. We’re in this historic and majestic stone barn that needed a full renovation.
We added a sub-station for power and a water treatment plant before installing a state-of-the-art brewhouse. The barn renovation itself took 52 weeks and the brewery install, a further 7 weeks.
We went for a top of the range 20hL semi-automated BrauKon 3 vessel brewhouse and installed a koelship and 3 foeder crafters to make Lambic-Style brews.
We have both canning and bottling equipment and since opening we’ve added a lot more tanks and a centrifuge to make the beer more stable and improve our yield and are planning on expanding again!
The approach
We decided early on to embrace social media to document our journey and build interest for the project. We shared our ambition as we took a dream and turned it into a reality. It felt brave and exciting.
We sought advice from friends who had established breweries and collaborated – at a time with craft beer was booming – making beers to showcase our intent. The brewing industry spurred us on, and the public watched with vicarious anticipation. There was no turning back!
“Our ethos is simple – to make good beer, with good people, in a way that respects where we are,” Miranda Hudson
Hurdles
However, it didn’t take long before our new venture faced unexpected challenges. I mean it’s not every day you dedicate 2 years of your life and uproot your family, spend close to 2 million pounds on a new venture, only to open right as every pub in the country is forcibly closed indefinitely!
Covid completely altered the landscape for businesses across the country – our timing couldn’t have been worse. It was a ride or die moment. As a manufacturer we could stay open but our routes to market were severely hampered and our team of 4 was too small to be furloughed.
Thankfully we made it through but at the time with all the uncertainty of how things would play out we simply had to become adaptive and reactive to survive. I learned a great deal about survival in this time. Our team is now at 8 and we have lots of plans.
Our scale and production
Since opening in 2019 we’ve trebled our production volumes from 120,000 litres (1.2KhL) a year to around 360,000 litres (3.6KhL). Our brew length is 20HL (2000 litres a batch). Our core and seasonal releases make up 70% of our production volume, the rest is made up of 10% cask specials, and 20% one-off specials – that include all our collaborative brewed and our Lambic-Style releases.
We mostly sell to pubs and bottle shops and have our own online shop and a taproom at the brewery. We also attend 30 or so events and festivals each year. We can’t make enough beer most months – it’s always a juggling act between fan favourites and specials and the plan is to slowly keep adding more tanks as our beer sales grow. Our ambition isn’t to get huge – capping at around 5KhL/yr to remain product and quality focused.
What’s in a name
You might be wondering why we are named Duration. There are 3 reasons behind our name: Firstly, Duration is the distance between two beats in musical terms – this relates to our love of both everyday fresh beers and our Lambic styles that can take years to produce.
Second, Henri Bergson, a philosopher – and failed physicist – a contemporary to Einstein put out the theory of Duration that he called Elon Vital. It pertains that every creative living thing strives to reinvent itself to stay relevant, which we love and appeals to our ambition to take people somewhere new with beer. Lastly, Duration is a single word, that translates across many languages and is easy to say over a busy bar!!
A typical day
Not sure there is a typical day for me. I do all the usual things you’d expect of an MD – stakeholder management, director meetings, annual budgeting, hiring, firing, strategy planning, expansion planning.
I’m also over a fair few things day-to-day too – Marketing (website, product assets, press, awards), Events (planning, logistics and working them!) Brewery Retail (running our online shop, brewery shop, taproom and tours) Admin, Finance + HR (phones, customer services, credit control, training staff / SOPS, loading in our systems).
A typical week
Sunday: Family and Socials
Maintaining relationships is crucial in a rural setting like ours, especially across winters which are long, dark and bleak. On Sundays I try to strengthen those connections. I dedicate Sundays to family and socialising, getting quality time with my loved ones and recharging.
I play rugby which gives me a great sense of solidarity. I started in lockdown – it was social and legal aggression when life was tough! If there’s no game on a Sunday, then it’s lunch or local day trip with family and friends. If I do end up working, it’s probably cover in the taproom or an unload at the brewery after a festival or planning out the week’s social posts ahead of a busy week in front of a movie on my lappy.
Monday: Lists, Production Meeting, Sales
Monday mornings are for planning. We set the week’s goals, and I make a detailed to do list to get me ready for a productive week. I get thrown a lot of curve balls and I can get easily side swept and distracted, so lists are essential, everything – however big or small goes on the list.
Next, I usually rattle through a few easy weekly tasks – topping up webshop and brewery shop stocks, deciding what next weekend’s beer line up is going to be in the taproom and ordering supplies before heading into our 10am Monday management meeting.
Together with Harry our sales manager and Andy production manager we spend 30mins discussing the wider brew schedule. We agree any schedule changes needed, confirm packaging splits and review recipes in development.
We tend to schedule 3 months out selling a lot on preorder. We look for any new sales leads, how they may impact stock, we do a little forecasting and run through any pricing requirements or customer issues.
The afternoon is sales focused, profiling what’s coming up to wholesale, and giving a call round key accounts, seeing how trade has been and generally seeing how we can support.
Tuesday: Asset Creation + Mailers + Beer Launch Prep
On Tuesdays I work on product assets. These print and digital assets take a recipe through from concept to being a finished product with a unique look and feel. With 3-4 new beers to launch a month – it’s a lot of work but it’s one of my more creative tasks and I love it.
We land on a name, then I think of a specific time and a place where that beer could be enjoyed. I write a 70 words description and select 3 specific tasting words from the recipe.
This goes over to our illustrator Shaun who works his magic on a striking artwork. Then it’s over to the design team to turn my copy and Shaun’s illustration into a label and keg badge and a full set of images – a can, a pour, a 6 pack and the like.
Once the beer has its unique personality it’s ready to be uploaded into various places like untapped, our trade sales platforms and in our beer library and online shop. We ship a few samples to a lifestyle photographer to get some shots for socials too and then we are ‘launch ready’.
I also use Tuesdays to write two weekly newsletters; one for our trade customers and one for everyone else. Again, I love this as it’s putting a little personality behind the products and the brand and I get to talk about what’s yet to come and what’s selling fast, what’s going on at the weekends at the brewery and what events we are attending.
Wednesday: Event + Collab Planning
Events and collaborative brews allow us to stay current with trends, engage with our customers, network with our peers, and stay creative and innovative in our work. On Wednesdays I plan for these – organising the logistics of it all. We attend 30 events a year, anything from music festivals, bars to ‘meet the producer’ events in pubs.
In spring each year, we put on The Great Farmhouse Exploration – a national showcase event that takes place at 20-30 bars and pubs across the UK. We brew special beers, and it takes 3 months to plan. A great highlight in our social events calendar.
We also have a charity partner – Community Sport Foundation. They drive inclusivity for people with disabilities and are associated with Norwich City Football Club. We raise funds at our events, and this year are busy planning a special release beer with a promotional video to go with it. It’s nice for us and our customers to give back.
Thursday: Finance, Credit Control + Unexpected ‘Clangers’.
Thursdays are when our general mailer goes out, we often give early access to new releases on our mailer. So, I check the webshop is loaded up and ready for launch.
I then turn my attention to our finances and cashflow, ensuring everything is on track and I do some budgeting work. I plan the weekly batch run of payments and make sure our books are in order. It’s tough out there in hospitality right now and we have seen several customers close their doors for good – which presents us with the problem of unpaid bills and needing to find new custom.
I tend to keep a bit of time blocked on Thursday afternoons for any unexpected work – you can’t always plan when things go awry but having a bit of time blocked for anything that might come up is helpful and stops me panicking when the unexpected does happen.
Last week we had a power cut in the brewery because a tractor hit an overhead power line. With 25,000 litres of unfinished beer in our fermentation tanks and a brew underway that could all spoil – we had to act fast, eyeball when the power would be back and get a back-up plan in place for a generator if there was more than a couple of hours outage. Luckily no harm was done but it sucked a full morning out of my week.
“Running a brewery is far from predictable, but it’s a journey I wouldn’t trade for anything. The highs and lows, the moments of triumph and despair, all come together to create a life that’s full of purpose and passion. It’s a wild ride, but one that I’m fully committed to—and I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Miranda Hudson
Friday: Taproom Prep + Socials
Fridays are a mixed bag. I try to wind down a little from the working week reviewing and finishing everything on this week’s list. I schedule all our socials for the coming week and ensure we are all set to open the taproom on the weekend. The warehouse and production team are off on weekends, so I check our trade portals are good for stock, and I call a few local accounts to check they have enough beer for the weekend.
Pub life is a big thing especially in the countryside, so I tend to end my week with a few cold ones and a catch up at the local – The Stag in our village. It’s great to see everyone – it’s like an extended living room feel – with beer!
Saturday: Taproom + Community Engagement
On Saturdays we open to the public running Tap Days in our barrel store. It’s dog and family friendly and wheelchair accessible and we aim to be as community focused, welcoming and educational as possible. We offer local street food and enjoy finding customers their perfect beer. We hold monthly brewery tours, and we run a local scheme for discounts on take outs.
I love interacting with our customers, seeing how the beers land, getting vital feedback and being on hand to support the taproom team. Beer lovers really travel from far and wide to brewery taprooms so it’s not just locals who visit. We launch new products and do our best to create a great inviting atmosphere.
We put on special events too at Oktoberfest and Thanksgiving or special Wagyu or Spring Lamb menus and organising and working at these are great fun.
The buzz
I love the dynamic pace of running a small business and I accept that comes with all the highs and lows. There are these moments of heart-melting joy that feel so pure – like when a customer takes their first gulp of a new beer. After a brief yet antagonising pause, they begin slowly nodding their head of satisfaction. In these moments all the hard work and worry falls away and I’m filled with immense pride in the team and what we are striving to achieve. It’s bliss.
The dread
I do wonder if others pursuing passion-driven careers experience the intensity and oscillating emotions I do surrounding their work.
I never fully turn off and it’s like I am in some odd trap of my own making where I feel exhilaration and a strong sense of accomplishment interspersed with dread, mostly low-level, sometimes acute!
The feeling is transitory and not unliveable, and I think it actually spurrs me on to find more reserves of grit and fortitude when I need it, but I wouldn’t say it’s that relaxing.
I suppose it’s a helpful motivator in moderation when inevitable moments of uncertainty about our future present themselves. Like when key customers go under owing thousands or the electric bill quadruples or an integral team member decides it’s time to embark on a new adventure. In these moments I try to be practical and accept that nothing stays the same.
Summary
I tend to keep a few maxims close to my heart. The first is: Just keep swimming. On difficult days, when it feels like everything is falling apart, I remind myself that showing up is half the battle. It’s about facing the day, no matter how challenging, and pushing through—even when I feel unsure of the next step.
The second maxim I live by is: Diamonds are made in the rough. In moments of struggle, I try to remember that pressure can be productive. Even when things feel impossible, I stay focused on the bigger picture and remind myself that with persistence and fortitude things will eventually lead to success.
Lastly, I believe in Strong Opinions held lightly. It’s important to act with conviction but also be open to change. If new information comes to light, I’m prepared to adapt, listen, and grow.
Running a brewery is far from predictable, but it’s a journey I wouldn’t trade for anything. The highs and lows, the moments of triumph and despair, all come together to create a life that’s full of purpose and passion. It’s a wild ride, but one that I’m fully committed to—and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
