With a passion for big, bold flavours coupled with a flair for producing excellent session-strength beers, Alex Kerr and his team at Two Flints are helping bring modern beer styles to the great and the good of Windsor, Berkshire. And they’re just getting started, too. 

“It takes two flints to make a fire”

Where did the inspiration for your brewery name come from? For Alex Kerr, founder of Windsor, Berkshire-based Two Flints, he has his own story to tell. And drawing influence from the famous quote from Louisa May Alcott’s coming-of-age novel Little Women was just the place to start.

“When we were planning this brewery the initial idea was to be more focused on mixed-fermentation and barrel-ageing than we probably currently are. Instead, these first two years has seen us really concentrate on hop-forward hazy pale ales and IPAs,” he explains. “And when it comes to these beers, we are extremely scientific in our approach. No stone is left unturned.”

Kerr adds: “For us, across the spectrum of lagers, IPAs and barrel-aged beers there is an art but there is also a science to the brewing process. When these are combined they produce something greater than the sum of their parts.

“And in opening this business my wife Sophie and I found out we were expecting twins so that was that – the brewery had to be called Two Flints!”

Opening at the end of 2022, Two Flints recently marked its second anniversary brewing in Berkshire. A town that has been the home of Windsor and Eton Brewery for more than 10 years, Alex Kerr and his team would soon be joined by neighbours Indie Rabble, founded by Naomi and Dave Hayward, in 2023.

But before Berkshire came calling, there was Singapore and Kerr’s career in insurance.

“I’ll be brutally honest, I wasn’t really into cask beer growing up. And when I was studying at university craft beer wasn’t really a thing. But shortly after leaving I discovered the Bermondsey Beer Mile and The Kernel. They, like many others, would be my gateway to great beer,” he recalls.

“I was hooked. Their famous brown-label bottles and the beautiful beer they made wasn’t like anything I had tasted before. Those experiences got me into the drinking side of craft beer and it snowballed, as it always does.”

Years would pass and Kerr’s work would take him into the field of insurance and that role would in turn take him to Singapore. “While you had a few beer bars and breweries such as Brewerkz, the beer scene was pretty poor on the whole. I missed the beers from home so naturally, I decided to give home brewing a shot,” he says.

“I had always loved cooking and the creativity involved in that, so it felt like something of a natural progression. It’s quite amusing, I suppose. I bought what proved to be a pricey bit of kit from the US and the elements immediately blew after I plugged it in.

“Coming from the US, the system was obviously wired different and I didn’t realise. But it didn’t stop me and I was fortunate to find a second-hand one on the local market. Sophie thought I was crazy but there I was, trying my hand at clones of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and getting a kick from witnessing fermentation take place.”

“Brewing became an insane passion that I couldn’t stop thinking about,” Alex Kerr

This early foray would lead Kerr down the well-travelled path to consuming all he could from magazines to podcasts and everything in-between, all in the confines of his basement bomb shelter, a common site in Singaporean residences.

“Hoppy beer was my passion but it became quite clear early on that to improve the quality of the hop-forward output I needed to improve the quality of my fermentation equipment,” he says. “Sophie was fine with it as long as the bomb shelter was where it stayed. But before long the whole spot was taken up.”

During his home brewing journey in Southeast Asia, Kerr also saw the challenges that many brewers would encounter, too. “It’s probably one of the hardest places to brew, possibly in the world. Everything is imported so ingredients can become cost-prohibitive and you’re brewing in 30C heat at 100% humidity which isn’t ideal. But while I was there, it was great to see companies like Brewerkz making the beers that they did.”

For several years Kerr would continue working in insurance while also exploring the wonderful world of beer and brewing. But then the global pandemic hit. An event that changed his personal and professional trajectory, like countless others across the world.

“Singapore is a strict country at the best of times and they had very stringent measures in place during COVID. You were only allowed out at certain times so it left me more time to focus on brewing at home. I completed my General Certificate in Brewing and all I wanted to do was create recipes. It became an insane passion that I couldn’t stop thinking about,” he says.

“It got to the point where Sophie and I decided to move back to the UK. We ended up leaving Singapore when they were easing lockdown rules and we arrived back days before Boris Johnson put us into a two-month lockdown.”

In searching for commercial brewing experience, Kerr would be given the opportunity by Drop Project of Mitcham and Brixton Brewery to help hone his craft while also securing a Diploma in Brewing from the Chartered Institute of Brewers and Distillers. It was during this time that the idea of starting his own operation would crystallise.

“We were living in North London at the time but that was going to prove prohibitive for what we wanted to do. In writing a business plan I knew I wanted a taproom to be a major part of our brewery,” he explains.

“Cambridge was somewhere we looked at originally and we probably visited close to 10 times looking at various properties. But for whatever reason it was never right. We then stumbled across Windsor and this classic railway arch. It had bags of potential, and great connections to London which were important both for us and the business. We took a gamble and went for it.”

Kerr would raise funding with help some family and friends and the lease for 25-26 The Arches, Windsor, was signed in September 2022. Although the taproom would open that December, they wouldn’t commence brewing on their 20HL semi-automatic brewhouse from Gravity Systems until February 2023, with Drop Project and Canterbury-based Floc brewing the first batches until then.

And now, some two years into that journey, a constant at Two Flints is Kerr and the team’s passion for producing and drinking hop-forward, often hazy beers. Current offerings, as of February 2025, include 5.5% hazy pale Half Life, 6% hazy IPA Tunnel Vision, 4.8% hazy pale ale Never End and 8% DIPA Big Bash.

These are complemented by 4.5% hoppy pils Small Talk, 5% German-style pilsner Pils and the brewery’s flagship 3.8% hoppy session pale Santiago.

“That’s what we love to brew and drink. I’m absolutely fascinated by hops and a visit to Nelson and Yakima are on my bucket list. Early on, even before we started brewing, we were meticulous about sourcing raw materials and we set up direct relationships with suppliers such as hop growers in New Zealand,” he says.

“I felt that by having an element of control in what we were using in the brewery we could ultimately positively impact the end product. I’m fixated on the best and freshest hops.”

“We love big, bold flavours but as any of our contemporaries have shown you also need a flagship beer,” Alex Kerr

While he has a passion for punchy, stronger ABVs, Kerr and the team knew that they also needed a session-strength beer in their portfolio and since day one that beer has been Santiago. Brewed with extra pale Maris Otter, torrified wheat, malted oats and a touch of Vienna, the beer features whirlpool and dry hop additions of Citra, Mosaic and Idaho 7.

“We love big, bold flavours but as any of our contemporaries have shown you also need a flagship beer that is approachable and drinkable. For us, that is Santiago. At 3.8% it’s a beer that is designed for drinking in the pub. It has a prominent hop character but one that’s not too saturated either so you can enjoy a few if you like,” says Kerr.

“It’s a beer that we are always looking at, too. That desire to constantly tweak probably stems from the home brewing days. Because I feel that if you let a beer stand still for too long then it’ll probably get left behind. The beer world is constantly moving, constantly changing and constantly innovating so you need to as well.”

Santiago, as with Two Flints’ other beers, have proved a hit with patrons at its popular taproom. Open from Thursday until Sunday each week, Kerr has enjoyed seeing visitors become converts of modern beer styles that breweries such as his produce. And under the guidance of taproom manager Sophie, it goes from strength-to-strength as a social hub with live music, events and a growing run club with more besides.

Working with the excellent Sophie is a fantastic team that includes head of sales Nick Swallow who joined with a raft of experience from Siren Craft Brew, his sales colleague George Barrow, assistant brewer Dillon and also drayman Paul Andrews. There is also head brewer Brett Moore who was the first member of the team to join Two Flints.

“Brett has been amazing and we are very fortunate to have him,” says Kerr. “While I love modern hoppy flavours I also really enjoy Saisons and mixed-fermentation beers. So when it came to hiring a head brewer I wanted someone from that field. And with Brett he had proven that time-and-time again in handling the barrel programme at London Beer Factory.

“He also had experience of clean beers at Beavertown so it really was the perfect fit. In addition he has an engineering background so as well as being our head brewer he is our electrician and everything in-between. It’s awesome.”

Looking ahead to the rest of 2025 and beyond, Kerr is exciting about the future. A cask release of Santiago, which marked the brewery’s second birthday, was a hit in the on-trade and three other cask beers will follow this year. But to produce more beer requires space and that has recently become a hurdle for the business.

“We’re looking to get an additional unit and ideally in 2025 we’d love another retail venue, too. London is somewhere we’d love to have a presence and it’s already our largest market with trade sales so it makes sense.”

That extra capacity and new retail opportunities will also allow Kerr and the team to produce more beers like Never End, their 4.8% hazy pale. “We call it Never End because we have a never-ending goal of continuous improvement,” he concludes. “It talks to who we are as a brewery, that collective constant need to do better. And that’s something that will never change.”