Lost and Grounded Brewers, the award-winning Bristol-based brewery, will celebrate their 10th anniversary next year. Established by Alex Troncoso and his partner Annie Clements, they’ve made a wealth of revered and regarded beers and inspired countless peers in the world of lager brewing. While Bristol is now home, the duo travelled far-and-wide to arrive at this point. Here Alex shares his early brewing journey and how it helped influence the brewery he and Annie run today.

I’ve been a professional brewer for over 20 years, and I’m often known as “the guy from Little Creatures” or “the old Camden Head Brewer” or the co-founder of Lost and Grounded Brewers in Bristol. However, there is much more to my brewing story, one that would start in Brisbane, Australia in the early 1990s.

I am originally from the US, but I went to high school in Brisbane. Back in 1992 there tended to be only one beer in pubs, or maybe two or three if you were lucky enough to stumble upon a pub with some diversity.

I have fond memories of drinking beer at the RE Hotel in Toowong, Brisbane with my school friends; frequenting the pub were a mix of locals, University of Queensland students, and of course those who were 18 but still in high school (or at least looked 18 as ID checks weren’t so much of a thing back then).

On draught there was Castlemaine XXXX Bitter, erm, a lager, Coopers Sparkling Ale, very rare as is from South Aus, and Tooheys Old, a dark ale, which was equally as rare as it is a beer from NSW (beer in Australia was very territorial back then).  

The normal order of the day was a jug of XXXX, with the brewery just being up the road, but I found myself drinking Coopers and Tooheys Old regularly and began to wonder what more there was to beer. Maybe it was the mammoth XXXX logo on the façade of the enormous brewery illuminating the skyline of inner-city Brisbane that had me in a trance, but I decided that I wanted to become a brewer.

After completing high school, I returned to the US to do a degree in Chemical and Petroleum Refining Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. As an 18 year old who was suddenly in a country where I couldn’t buy beer, I would find myself at a loss of how to conquer this predicament. 

With the gigantic Coors brewery just up the road – I believe what was then the largest brewery on the planet – I couldn’t ignore that I still had the brewing bug.  

So, I went and bought a book on homebrewing, and would create my first beer in June 1993, an English bitter using malt extract, a bit of pre-milled crystal malt, some T100 Fuggles hop plugs and dried yeast. I can’t say the beer was particularly good, however the alcohol did the job, and I was hooked on brewing.  I would go on to doing many batches during my years at university, eventually ending with full mashes in the garage of my share house.

“I believe education is really important as it gives you future options.”

Alex Troncoso

In the summer of 1995, I was lucky enough to secure a season of work experience at Carlton and United Breweries in Sydney (now closed) via an intro from a family friend, so I headed off back to Australia for a few months. I was blown away by the scale of the operation, and from that point I knew brewing was the career for me.  

I met Brad Rogers (co-founder of Stone and Wood) during my short stint as he was a young brewer for CUB, and we’ve kept in touch ever since. 

Soon I was to learn that Chuck Hahn, a big name in Australian brewing, was actually from the US and went to the Colorado School of Mines, and would later find out that Eric Toft, the renowned brewmaster from Private Landbrauerei Schonram (my favourite lagers ever!) is also an alumni, so I figured brewing was a definite option for me.

I returned to the US after those few months and landed a part-time job at Irons Brewery in Denver (also long closed) as a cellar hand which would fuel my thirst for knowledge.

I graduated with my degree in December 1996, moved to Tasmania, and of course got a job in an iron ore mine! I met my partner Annie Clements (pictured above, also co-founder of Lost and Grounded) in October 1997 and we would go on to live all around Australia, as well as Belgium, and eventually ended up in the UK.  

I had given up homebrewing when I returned to Australia, and hoped to get a job in brewing, but unfortunately back then it was a very niche industry, with few openings as most people who entered the industry didn’t leave. I ended up in a seven-year struggle trying to find a job in the industry I loved, only to receive rejection after rejection – probably about 40 all up!  

It was an old friend, Doug Donelan, who was to tell me it took him 10 years to get a job in brewing – he worked for Chuck Hahn, then Lion, and eventually was CEO of NZ Hops before he retired  – and that I just needed to keep trying.

In 1999 Annie encouraged me to get back into homebrewing and join a local club in the western suburbs of Melbourne, The Westgate Brewers. The club embraced me with open arms, and I found a group of like-minded beer enthusiasts. 

I would go onto brewing two-three times per month (full mash) in our house in Melbourne and enrolled in a Graduate Certificate of Brewing at the University of Ballarat, all the while continuing as a process engineer. 

I entered many homebrew competitions, often just sticking with my American Pale Ale recipe with which I won successive “Wort Hogs Pale Ale Mania” trophies (another local Melbourne club’s annual comp). 

“Remember that you can make beer like we do, you can make beer in a small cask ale brewery, or you can make beer in your kitchen. In all scenarios it is still beer, and it all can be beautiful.”

Alex Troncoso

Eventually I would be given some help to enter the industry by someone who is now an old friend (Dave Edney, a legend who worked at a lot of early Australian craft breweries) and would get a job at a brewery in Melbourne. From there Annie and I made a bold decision to leave Melbourne for me to join Little Creatures as a shift brewer, after which we had a (very short) sojourn in Belgium where I worked for InBev, and then returned to Little Creatures as Head of Brewing. 

After Little Creatures was purchased by Lion we made another huge move to London for me to become Brewing and Development Director at Camden Town Brewery, and in 2015 we embarked on forming Lost and Grounded Brewers.

I believe education is really important as it gives you future options. During my early years at Little Creatures I also completed the CIBD Diploma in Brewing, and later a Masters Degree in Business (MBA). There is always something to learn, and the MBA helped me appreciate what I was experiencing at Little Creatures at the time, and subsequently would feed into our thinking,  values and culture at Lost and Grounded.

There’s been a lot of hard work, tears and stress along the way, but equally a lot of joy.  I look back at all of the effort and moves that it took to get us to where we are now, and it’s kind of surreal.

My advice for those who may be reading this who are trying to break into the industry is to prove yourself – study brewing, get a part-time job in a brewery, enrol in a cicerone class – just do something that shows you really want it.

But most important for me when surrounded daily by our beautiful brewery here in Bristol, is to remember that you can make beer like we do, you can make beer in a small cask ale brewery, or you can make beer in your kitchen. In all scenarios it is still beer, and it all can be beautiful.

Here is Alex’s recipe for American Pale Ale, the beer that he would make dozens of times through his homebrewing years.