September 20, 2023

Homebrew Hero | Alex Redpath, Full Circle Brew Co

At Full Circle Brew Co, Alex Redpath is a brilliant brewer at a brilliant brewery. He also has an excellent way with words, too. Here he tells us about his early brewing journey and the series of events that led to one of his earliest beers – Rye Member Me.

I’ve always loved craft beer and the brewing process. Every trip away always included a brewery tour, so when the opportunity came up to experiment with home brew kits, I went all in. Starting with four home brew kits; after the first kit, I was hooked.

Very soon having two on the go at the same time; it developed into an all-grain system consisting of an insulated coolbox mash tun and a big stainless pot for HLT/Kettle.

I would brew twice a week and was desperate to learn, I gave away most of what I made just to empty an FV and brew something else.

I soon filled a spare room at my Dad’s house with FV’s, fermentation fridges, bottle/keg storage and everything else I could get my hands on.

It worked well, he got unlimited free beer and I had space to dedicate time to my new passion.

At the time, I was working with my Dad in a business we had set up together, whilst not something I was massively passionate about, it gave me the flexibility to brew for competitions and listen to podcast after podcast to learn as much as possible.

I had also dreamed of taking a course at Brewlab, a brewery training provider in Sunderland; I had picked out a course and thought about saving up over five years, and wondered where that could take me.

I loved homebrew competitions and entered as many as possible locally; I thought my beer was clean, consistent and good quality.

I wanted instant feedback, positives, negatives and any comments I could use to improve my process, recipes and packaging.

I was fortunate to get 1st and 3rd in my first competition at the Newcastle BrewDog Homebrew Club and won several more competitions to have my beers brewed at local brew pubs. It’s one of these recipes that I’ve detailed overleaf, a Rye IPA.

Two days after I brewed the Rye IPA, I had what I can only describe as the worst day of my life. I walked into my Dad’s house to find he had passed away overnight. I still remember every step, action and phone call that day, and it will never leave me.

The next couple of days were a bit of a blur, but I remembered that I still had a beer fermenting in his spare room, and I decided to dry hop, package and enter it as I’d always planned to; he would have hated beer going to waste!

He had written in the past that if anything ever happened, to use Steve Earle – Remember Me, as his remembrance song; this seemed a very fitting inspiration for the name: Rye Member Me.

After all the chaos and emotion of those few weeks, I got an email to say the beer had won and asking if I would come down to the brewpub to brew it.

These events made me realise how short life can be, so I signed up for the Diploma at Brewlab the next day. The rest is history!

I introduced myself to Ben Cleary at Brewlab whilst he was there getting some consultancy on opening a brewery and things went from there.

Before I knew it, I was employed as a development brewer, working side by side with Ben to develop the brand, business plan, location and a range of core beers.

I brewed on a 100L brew magic kit, producing 2 kegs per batch, which we sold through Ben’s bottle shop, The Pip Stop.

This allowed us to get instant feedback from very picky customers, which helped tweak and develop final versions of the recipes that became Repeater, Hoop and our multi award-winning IPA, Looper.

In 2019 we got the keys for a unit in Newcastle, and later that year, our SSV four vessel 30HL brewhouse turned up ready to be commissioned.

Although it felt like a huge step up from 100L to 3000L, we developed great beer from day one. It still feels like utter chaos at times, I often suffer from imposter syndrome and worry somebody may realise that I don’t know what I’m doing.

If you surround yourself with the right people everything will work out. We have managed to get through pandemics, Brexit, cost of living crises, wars and whatever else may happen to us,

I look back at my home brewing processes and feel that I still hold the same principles today. I would always keep my recipes simple and let the ingredients speak for themselves, rather than try and dial in every possible variable, keeping them consistent going forward.

Pitching rate, temperature, sanitisation, DO reduction, fermentation profile, DH rates, DH contact times and process, find what works for your beer and your kit, there’s always room to improve and innovate.

If things go wrong, try to go back to your basics and make sure you get back to a beer you love before you experiment again.

Most importantly, brew the beer you want to brew, if it’s a new style to you, find what you like from that style, what commercial beers you like or dislike in that category and what makes those beers unique.

On a final note, in 2021 we were lucky enough to win a tender in Sweden for a Rye IPA, which turned out to be a rebrew of Rye Member Me.

It’s a moment that will always remind me that bad things do happen but it’s how you deal with them and move forward that makes you who you are.

You can find Alex’s recipe for Rye Member Me, right here.