In Topsham, Exeter, a local brewery is showing why fresh, sessionable beers can lead to sustainable growth, an excellent reputation and lots of happy drinkers.

“The ethos here at Topsham Brewery is very much ‘will this beer sell in a pint?’. We ask ourselves whether someone will want to buy a pint of that beer then come back and buy it again,” asks head brewer Jamie Duffield.

“That approach to session beers does narrow your focus a little and brings the ABV range of a beer you are brewing to the 3% – 5%. But that presents us with a fantastic opportunity. How do we create a new beer in that range that keeps someone coming back for more? It’s a challenge we meet head-on.”

In Exeter’s beer scene, Topsham Brewery aim to stand out not by shouting the loudest, but by quietly serving the local community exactly what they want to drink.

A loyal and local following

The brewery has built a loyal following based on the premise of making beers that are deeply approachable, wholly accessible, and produced to keep the customer coming back for another round.

And these beers are dispensed from their in-house serving tanks. A set-up that offers brewery-fresh beer but also presents the team with decisions to make when it come to keeping beer moving.

“Serving tanks are like buses. You don’t really want a slow-moving one,” he smiles. We could brew a 9% triple dry-hopped Double IPA. It could be delicious but in experience it would move slower than other beers and we’d need that tank for the next beer that’s ready.”

For Duffield though, being more “focused” when it comes to the types of beer Topsham produce isn’t a drawback. Quite the opposite…

“I have a real interest and curiosity in making the best 3.4% Pale Ale possible,” he says. “We leave no stone uncovered when it comes to creating and improving the beers that people will hopefully keep coming back for.”

And coming back there are. With Topsham expanding thanks to a new facility minutes from its current brewery and taproom. A new premises that will primarily handle cask beer production.

But before helping Topsham grow as a business, Duffield took a unique journey through the British beer industry. Traversing the wildly experimental before finding profound satisfaction in the hyper-local perfection of a session pale ale.

I have a real interest and curiosity in making the best 3.4% Pale Ale possible.

Jamie Duffield, Topsham Brewery

This path into the brewing world was paved by an academic background that might seem unconventional at first glance, but perfectly aligns with the dual nature of brewing itself.

While studying at the University of Reading, he was training to be a primary school teacher while also undertaking a joint honours degree in fine art.

This dual mindset laid the vital foundation for his career. “My interests in like areas of study have always been a strange mix of science and art,” he says.

A move to a professional brewing career

For him, the transition into brewing was a completely natural progression. “It’s the perfect confluence of both of those things,” he explains. “You get to be a biological engineer at the same time as being an artist, and there’s very few jobs where you can do that”.

His practical brewing education started during university where many modern brewers find their footing and that’s homebrewing. “There was always somebody brewing in the kitchen,” he recalls.

The sheer volume and variety of their output became a focal point of their social lives. For a famous house party, Duffield and his flatmates brewed ten different beers, successfully ensuring they had more beer available at their house than the local pub did.

These early, ambitious homebrews even featured locally foraged ingredients, leading to wild creations like an 8% heather honey mild, an 8% orange IPA, spruce beers, milk stouts, chocolate stouts, and chilli stouts.

After graduating, Duffield realised his passion lay in the brewhouse. He transitioned into the professional brewing industry, initially landing an entry-level job at Bingham’s Brewery. He had gotten to know the owner, Chris Bingham, while working behind the bar at local pubs in Reading, a communal area where brewers frequently came and went.

Within six months of Duffield joining, the brewery won the prestigious Champion Beer of Britain award for a vanilla stout, transforming the operation into what Duffield describes as a “vanilla stout factory overnight” and prompting rapid growth.

Bingham’s provided a solid grounding in traditional cask ale, but as a brewery dedicated to returning to a set portfolio of traditional beers, Duffield longed for a creative outlet. 

Serving tanks are like buses. You don’t really want a slow-moving one.

Jamie Duffield, Topsham Brewery

This desire for creative freedom led him to Wild Weather, where he started as a production brewer before taking on the head brewer role. Here Duffield found the boundary-pushing environment he craved, often driven by the brewery’s physical limitations.

Brewing on rudimentary equipment with open-top vessels and dish-bottom tanks meant they couldn’t produce heavily dry-hopped pale ales. Instead, this team of creatives and artists embraced the bizarre.

“We figured actually that the best expression of our personalities there and the way that we could swing the hardest punches was to go all in on some of these beers that made you turn your head around and go, ‘What the heck is that?‘” Duffield explains.

This philosophy led to a 10.5% double banana milkshake IPA and an infamous cockle and seaweed stout. For the latter, Duffield fondly recalls the local fishmonger hand-delivering a tray of cheap cockles and seaweed out of pure curiosity. The fishmonger stood in the brewery and watched in utter disbelief as the seafood went straight into the beer.

However, this hyper-experimental business model meant their beer, while popular among enthusiasts, was spread thinly across craft beer bars nationwide, lacking a concentrated, high-volume local presence.

Following his tenure at Wild Weather, Duffield spent time working in packaging operations at Siren, further reinforcing his appreciation for the Berkshire beer scene before eventually making the move to Topsham.

Today, at Topsham Duffield’s brewing ethos has shifted dramatically. He has traded the nationwide hunt for novelty for a deep, concentrated focus on local pintability. The culture in Devon, which Duffield notes is “still very much the land of like cask beer,” demands undeniable quality and consistency.

The brewery leans heavily into this local necessity, prioritising a tight geographical footprint over widespread hype. Topsham recently released a West Coast IPA named ‘Under the Radar, Above the Clouds’ a title that Duffield says summarises their philosophy of not being a hype brewery, but rather focusing quietly on making the best beer available. “I feel that we are quietly doing good work.”

This also extends to their flagship house Pale Ale ‘Shiny!’. “With 3.4% you don’t have the weight of the alcohol to like rest your laurels on,” Duffield explains.

Using leading ingredients to make better beer

Simply increasing the dry hop quantity only increases intensity, not complexity. To overcome this, they utilise cutting-edge ingredients. They ferment with Pomona, a modern hybrid yeast strain developed by Lallemand and Escarpment Labs.

This specific yeast provides a tropical character reminiscent of Kveik without the funk, delivering pineapple and mango esters before any dry hops are even added. They also employ modern hop products like DynaBoost and Hyperboost.

“We will always ask ourselves how we can make 3.4% beer drink like a 4.8%?’” Duffield muses. The goal is to ensure the beer finishes without feeling thin, and remains just bitter enough without coming across as sweet from over-reliance on lactose or maltodextrin.

The hop bill for Shiny is a precisely calculated 2:1 blend of American to New Zealand hops. For Duffield, Citra provides the classic, recognisable American IPA flavour; Krush delivers a juicy, “bombastic powerhouse” burst of pineapple and mango that tastes like a melted Solero ice cream; and the Nectaron brings what Duffield simply calls “intrigue”.

The layering achieves a drinkable complexity that keeps them coming back.

Jamie Duffield, Topsham Brewery

For the average local drinker this combination creates an incredibly compelling pint. They might drink it and say, “God, this has got a lot of flavour, but I can’t really explain to you why that is,” Duffield explains. “The layering achieves a drinkable complexity that keeps them coming back.”

And the success of their accessible beers means the business is operating at absolute maximum capacity. “Right now, I feel like we’re sort of we’re playing a game, which is, can we keep beer available. The answer, he admits, is “almost“.

To solve this capacity issue, Topsham Brewery is currently expanding with another production brewery just a two-minute cycle ride away. This will feature six fermenters dedicated to producing all of their cask beer and supplementing their keg supply.

The immediate goal of this expansion is to “backfill that deficit” in their own venues, with the hope that doubling their capacity will eventually allow for some spare volume to begin distributing on a small local scale.

One thing is for certain. With Duffield and the team’s commitment to quality and sessionability regardless of style, local drinkers are certain that the next beer they choose is one they would never regret ordering.