A passion that turned profession. The story of Mike Clayton-Jones, co-founder of Double-Barrelled, will resonate with many. Here he shares a wealth of his formative experiences that have helped craft the much-loved Reading-based brewery he started with wife Luci. Photo credits: Double-Barrelled Brewery
If I look back over my history with beer there are a few stand out moments that if I had spotted the signs earlier, I might have done things differently. Likely though, I still would have ended up in the same or similar place.
My first interaction with non-macro lager was in my college bar at university. I’d got a job working behind there in my first year, as a way of getting involved in the social scene.
Alongside the predictable lines for the early 2000’s there was a permanent cask line of Deuchars IPA on tap. Turns out it had just won BIIA World Champion Cask Ale – I hadn’t paid it much notice until one New Years Day, the landlord knowing the bar was about to be shut for three weeks insisted that four of us were going to drink as much of the remaining tapped cask as possible.
With heavy hangovers to drink through, we gave it a rock solid go, but in the process my perspective changed a little and the idea of there being alternative beer styles to the mass produced lagers had taken root quickly.
It was some years later, and having collected a few hobbies, most of them revolving around wanting to know how things worked, that meant making beer was going to be a part of my life.
I found myself in a Wilkinson’s, with no memory of what I was looking for, but stumbling across an aisle dedicated to making beer at home.
I remembered being on a work conference earlier that same year, where a colleague had mentioned he and his dad made beer together all the time and how rewarding it was for the two of them to spend time bonding over, not to mention that they then had access to as much cheap beer as they could ever want.
Wanting to understand how beer was made, and subsequently getting my hands on a cheaper source of it went hand in hand, and my mind went back to those pints of Deuchars at New Year. Remembering there was something in the alternative, that there were different flavour profiles, and seeing a wall of oversized cans of malt extract bases for all manner of beer styles.
“I didn’t realise at the time quite how firmly down the rabbit hole I had already become,” Mike Clayton-Jones, Double-Barrelled
I picked one more or less at random and grabbed a “complete Coopers home brew kit” – a plastic bucket, a spoon, a hydrometer and 40 plastic screw top bottles; and took them home.
Followed the kit to the letter and waited the two weeks with this bucket going through all kinds of madness in my airing cupboard.
I had very little idea what was going on inside it, but the contents smelled fruity, and I was beyond excited. Once bottled, conditioned and allegedly carbonated, I opened the first one up with a mixture of anxious excitement and hesitation.
Poured out my first home brewed beer… gave it a sniff and was pleasantly surprised to notice that it wasn’t terrible.
Don’t get me wrong, it certainly wasn’t a hit, but 40 bottles of drinkable beer I had made at home – I didn’t realise at the time quite how firmly down the rabbit hole I had already become.
The next steps can more or less sum up the way I work in general. I had gotten a tiny taste of this hobby, and of a very mediocre beer, but immediately wanted to jump in at the deep end and go from the one malt extract kit I had completed to date, to buying a full all grain home brew set up.
I knew I could make something better than the extract kit I had started with, and I was now on a mission to do exactly that.
It was around this time that I had started drinking “craft beer” with my mates, and through very fortunate circumstances came to count Joel Mellor of The Hop Locker fame, as a good friend. With access to the latest beers in a young and growing UK craft beer scene, I would spend as much time at the South Bank Food Market as I could.
Each visit I’d be left trying to work out how to get anywhere close to some of the heavy hitters of the time – Mrs Brown by Siren, or Cannonball by Magic Rock, Jack Hammer from Brewdog and Black Betty from Beavertown!
Every time I tried something new it was fuelling my desire to want to know how to make it. I’d write recipes that pushed complexity of dark malts through the roof, or add in obscene amounts of crystal malt derivatives way beyond suggested levels to see what it did to the end result – in short, very sweet and low strength… could do better!
I had picked up a copy of John Palmers book How To Brew, and was making my may through it. Whilst also just finding out what did and didn’t work.
Fast forward slightly, and my partner Luci and I were planning our wedding. Alongside putting together a beer list for our guests, as a number of us were now fully fledged “craft beer enthusiasts” to be polite.
We were also working on a home brewed beer as a wedding favour. This was the first time the name Double-Barrelled was uttered, in jest really, as a nod to Luci taking my already double-barrelled surname.
So, the beer got brewed, bottled, labelled, and given an identity. The process of working on that together had left a lingering idea in both of us, and it was something we kept talking about whilst on honeymoon. So much so, that the day after we got back, we registered the name with Companies House, just in case.
“Along the way, we spent hundreds of hours in a myriad of breweries, tasting rooms, bars, venues and bottle shops,” Mike Clayton-Jones, Double-Barrelled
It’s worth mentioning that at this point that Luci and I had been working in corporate careers, (food & drink marketing, and supply chain management/consultancy respectively), with neither of us particularly overjoyed at staring down the barrel of another 30+ years of doing that.
Some circumstances happened in our personal lives, that left some rather gaping holes and a sense of life being very much too short to be doing something you don’t care much about.
With that and a mantra of only regretting the things you don’t do, we started seriously considering the prospect of a move to the beer industry.
The glaringly obvious lack of experience and knowledge of the sector, commercial brewing practices and running any form of hospitality led business was a priority to deal with.
Our approach couldn’t be described as the most traditional, but armed with our “life is short” mentality, and knowing that if we did open a business together it would be all encompassing at least for the early years meant we took the decision to do some extensive research. This research took the form of a trip away… a very long trip away!
What conceptually began as an extended road trip across the US exploring a craft beer scene that was more mature than the UK at that time, quickly morphed and grew as we looked further into the nuances of small batch beer and alcohol production around the world.
A European leg was added to understand much more about alcohol production practices steeped in history, visiting multi-generation wine producers as well as some of the oldest breweries in the world.
That was followed by a South and Central American extension, for more wine knowledge, as well as Tequila and Mezcal production.
We also learnt how ancient civilisations like the Mayans made Chicha – a fermented corn drink. We spent time in Australia and New Zealand, with more small wine producers alongside hop farms and the breweries that are fortunate to reside on their doorsteps.
Centuries old methods for production of Sake whilst visiting Japan, as well as other pockets of the Pacific.
Visiting one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world; Rapa Nui (Easter Island) where even here craft brewing is alive and well.
On top of having already spent and continuing to see what was happening back home in the UK, a constantly evolving landscape – for example when we left for our trip, Verdant and Deya were in their infancies – look at what they have achieved now!
Along the way, we spent hundreds of hours in a myriad of breweries, tasting rooms, bars, venues and bottle shops.
All of which helped to shape, and really crystalise what Double-Barrelled would become. It was early on in the trip that what I had suspected would involve brewing at some level, was solidified – I just couldn’t shake the idea of making the best beer possible, packaging it, and putting it out for the world to try.
Hearing the start-up stories from so many small alcohol producers and the passion they all poured into what they made really struck a chord.
We sought advice along the way – How big should we go? Where would you build if you were starting from scratch?
Whilst travelling my attention had started to turn towards the knowledge and skills gap of how to actually go about making high quality beer,” Mike Clayton-Jones
What would you do differently now, knowing what you went through in the set up? What were the major successes? How did you overcome the challenges?
Everyone we visited was prepared to offer advice, support, answer questions, help and above all offer us their incredible hospitality.
Seeing how much this industry supported people who were trying to get involved in it, let alone what could happen with deeply forged relationships was really eye opening.
The responses we got cemented the ideas we were forging of becoming part of this industry. We couldn’t soak up more information if we’d tried. We’d spent a total of 11 months collecting information, meeting people, and really refining what we wanted Double-Barrelled to be.
Living life out of a backpack was exciting, always on our way to see what was happening elsewhere – we moved through 29 countries along the way, with the longest we stayed in any one city just five nights.
Whilst travelling my attention had started to turn towards the knowledge and skills gap of how to actually go about making high quality beer.
I was reading books on the go – still making my way through How to Brew by John Palmer, Wood & Beer by Dick Cantwell & Peter Bouckert, the Brewing Element Series from authors such as John Palmer (again), Colin Kaminski, Jamal Zainasheff, Chris White and John Mallett.
I picked up e-books with information on hop varietals, making notes about pairings I wanted to try myself as well as looking out for those combinations in the taprooms and bottle shops we were visiting.
Access to the information was fantastic, but I was desperate to put some of this knowledge and learning into practice.
Literally overflowing with ideas, and not wanting to waste any time at all, we purchased our first commercial brewhouse and FVs – a 100l two vessel system and a pair of conical jacketed FVs from Elite Stainless.
We filled in the relevant forms with HMRC, applying to turn our garage into a premises licenced to produce alcohol, and signed up to AWRS.
After a couple of batches to figure out the kit, get to grips with the concepts of everything I had read, this was it. Time to make some beer.
During the journey, we had decided if we were going to do this, we wanted to home in to a specific point of difference.
The early aims of Double-Barrelled were focussed on making huge Stouts (the bigger the better) and Fruited Kettle Sours.
Certainly these were the beers we were enjoying the most when we were out researching, particularly in the US.
The UK beer scene was lacking someone who was spending their time predominantly on these styles, so we felt it was an opportunity worth exploring.
Meanwhile, Luci was spending her time looking at how we could bring Double-Barrelled into the world – out of the garage and in front of the people.
At the time (September/October 2017) the opportunities to get in front of a lot of people in a short space of time were limited, unless you already had a solid contact list/experience of working within the beer industry.
We made the call to sign up to Craft Beer Rising and launch Double-Barrelled in February 2018, to as many people as possible.
They suggested we needed to bring twelve 30l kegs to pour across the three days. I did some sums, and worked out I didn’t have a tremendous amount of time to make mistakes, or perfect those early recipes.
We made the decision to do things differently, coming to market without brewing a pale ale or an IPA.
Our launch at Craft Beer Rising saw us bring an Imperial Stout, an India Pale Lager, a Raspberry and Beetroot Gose, and a Milk Stout.
For Double-Barrelled CBR was a way to test whether we had what it took to take things further, and really plunge into brewing on a commercial scale.
Having effectively home brewed everything, admittedly on a more sophisticated kit than most homebrewers were using at the time, it was an incredible feeling to watch people take notice of our branding, read the list and decide to try something.
Even better yet, when someone took their first sip, looked up and just smiled at us. The reception of all of those beers across those three days was mind blowing – we had people coming over saying they’d been made to come and try them, we had pro brewers coming over and saying the nicest possible things about beer I had literally sat in my garage and made.
The test of CBR had definitely given us the confidence to take things further. The confidence to make a huge leap from those 100l batches in my garage, and go straight into 24hL on our full size kit also (justified by a lot of the discussions of those who’d done this journey before).
Summer of 2018 saw us move into the building we still call home. And very quickly we realised we needed to brew more than just imperial stouts and sours.
A small core range began and has been growing ever since, alongside an ever rotating list of special beer releases and one-offs.
I wanted to put a recipe out that reflected back on the early days of Double-Barrelled, and with fondness I chose Seven Dollar Saturday – the milk stout that we took to CBR, and subsequently got rebrewed in the very early days of our step up to commercial sized batches.
The name comes from a story we picked up talking to Jason and Craig, two of the founders of Big Shed Brewing in Adelaide, South Australia.
They had done similar things, stepping up from home brewing together, to opening a small brewery with their partners and eventually scaling up to some seriously impressive proportions.
The story goes that in their early days of selling beer to the public, someone came in one Saturday and bought just one pint for $7AUD, and that was their take for the day.
A few years later as they’d grown and evolved, if one of them was having a bad day for whatever reason, they held on to the reminder that it might be hard but it’s not as hard as that Seven Dollar Saturday.
So we borrowed the memory and used it to keep us grounded when times were and continue to be hard.
And to try your hand at Mike’s Seven Dollar Saturday recipe – just click this link!
