James Brown

One of the world’s most successful Internet beer bosses James Brown is currently the toast of Britain, having set up the biggest online festival in history. Here he talks to YoA’s own Emily Gunn in an exclusive interview.

By Emily Gunn
James Brown is a name you should be applauding in lockdown if you’re a British ale lover. Not only has he been running the most popular craft beer club for seven years, delivering much-loved ales to our front doors, but he’s successfully hosted the World’s first online beer festival for us to clink our cans too. I chatted with the founder of “Beer 52” about how isolation has affected his companies sales over the past three months.

Having a break from the highlands, we start the call with the Scottish chap admitting that he’s appreciating the few degrees of warmer weather being located in London. He goes on explain what happened to ‘Beer 52’ when Covid-19 hit, “As soon as the lockdown was announced, we saw an insane peak and surge in the demand for orders. We had seen it coming and we thought, if the pubs are shut, people are going to want to get beer somehow. Thankfully we had a bunch of temporary staff that could come in and help us. It was very unknown though… we were ready to react when it happened.”

I asked James why he thought society was reaching for their website for their alcohol fix, “I think many people haven’t explored having beer delivered to their door. Before this, I think people thought it was a strange concept. People are willing to give it a shot. We have been pleased to try and cope with the demand.”

And it seems that demand was larger than life as he tells me, “We set up a new production line to pack the orders. We got it up to the point where we could send 10,000 orders a day from our warehouse. That was double what we normally do. It was great.” It seems James was thankful to help out his budding partners throughout the world, “The increase of demand meant that, when lots of breweries closed because of Covid, we were able to help those guys keep production running. We needed beer for these thirsty punters across the UK wanting it delivered.”

Understanding that, even being an isolated nation, we wouldn’t slow down our need for booze, I was intrigued to find out what region was most needing their fix, “London and the South East is a huge area and lots of our members are from there. I guess because craft ales has been there for quite a while. All the places you could normally get these cans in London weren’t there. There is a nice spread, even in rural areas where the supermarket was much further away. To be able to get it delivered to your door was a great thing.”

Launching the World’s 1st online ‘Cyberfest’, James tells me what influenced him to put on the night in, “It came about because lots of the breweries had dropped 80 percent of sales overnight. We were thinking about how to sell online. We came up with the idea to host the first online beer festival where we could invite our favourite breweries on a four-hour live stream with tasting and tours. The reason we did it was that we thought we could use the power of the Beer 52 community and do that to help support the brands, and they were paid upfront for the beer. We had thousands of our members join online. Friday sold out in a few hours with 5000 tickets. Because of that, we did a second session on Saturday. It was incredible.”

I quickly came to discover who has the best role within the team. Callum, the beer buyer, gets to taste the shipped-in produce to pick who gets placed in the boxes, “We still have stock flowing in from all around Europe. Poor Callum… his house is actually full of boxes of beer to try and test. I think there are some team members living locally, so he has dropped some on their door and ran away.”

With such unique flavours on their website, I wanted to know what stood out the most for the owner, “The vanilla chocolate nitro stout that we had on Cyberfest. It’s a polish brewery, called Browar Stu Mostów. Normally beer is carboned with Co2, but this is carbonated with nitro, super smooth similar to Guinness. They also did tips on how to pour it. It was just amazing, very unique.”

I finished by asking this humble hard-working individual if he was optimistic for face to face beer festivals in the distant future, “Since this began I’ve just taken it as it comes. We are at the mercy of the decision-makers, it’s frustrating sometimes. I would put a big question mark over how that will operate. I hope it’s sooner rather than later. Something we would love to do is host Cyberfest for events around the UK and get comedians and musicians along.”

TikTok: Jacob Klap

AN Aussie downed TEN beers – before he realised his girlfriend had tricked him into drinking non-alcoholic brews.

In a TikTok video which has gone viral, Jacob Klap is filmed happily swigging back the booze-free beers which are cleverly poured into a glass by his partner Sarah so he does not know what he is drinking.

“Hey, what kind of beer are these?” Jacob asks after his third drink. “They taste a little different, don’t they?”

Three beers later, he asks again.

“What are those beers? That’s my sixth and I just don’t feel anything.”

Finally after ten, the penny drops.

“Hey, where are the beers? Where are the bottles?” he asks. “This is my tenth and I’m bloated like f ** k and I feel normal.”

After finding the non-alcohol bottles, Jacob realises he’s been tricked.

BRITAIN’S pubs could soon be able to serve food and drink outside, according to new government plans.

To boost the flagging economy, Downing Street is in the process of drawing up a package of measures to help prevent unemployment and get the public spending again.

As part of the plans, cafes and restaurants which want to seat diners outside will not have to pay fees to local authorities.

The measures are being drawn up by chancellor Rishi Sunak and business secretary Alok Sharma, and backed by Boris Johnson and his chief advisor Dominic Cummings.

Previous guidelines said pubs won’t open back up until July 4 ‘at the earliest’ but a new plan drawn up by ministers will allow bars to start serving again sooner.

Pubs were closed for the foreseeable future on March 20, just days before the country went into full lockdown.

Under the ‘blueprint’ drawn up by the Department for Business involves a plan for drinkers to place orders remotely via an app to ensure people don’t have to walk up to the bar or have direct contact with staff.

By Emily Gunn

Feeling thirsty during the lockdown? Then why not get foreign beer delivered right to your doorstep?

‘There’s a world of beers out there’ is the slogan plastered on the webpage of ‘Beer 52’, who deliver new ales from numerous countries to your door each month. With the Society of Independent Brewers currently representing more than 825 independent craft breweries in the UK, and a huge boom for unique flavours, is this company the saviour for the wheat lovers at home in lockdown?

Founded back in the Summer of 2013, Beer52 was inspired by a motorcycle road trip that James Brown took with his Dad. Stopping at breweries in Belgium along the way, he found his love of craft beer. The website has a broad range of 124 IPAs, lagers, stouts, and pale ales from UK, Europe, and Australasia. 

One 26-year-old customer commented after signing up, “I was intrigued to taste new ones on the market. People are doing such weird and wonderful things with beer now and I missed pointing to a new label in a pub.” With streaming services and book services booming in lockdown, it’s no surprise people are turning to alcohol delivery subscriptions for their fixes. 

A unique feature about these beers seems to the outstanding branding from the brewers themselves. One customer said, “It’s like a competition with beer cans now. I always look for the funkiest and weirdest, one that stands out or catches your eye. It just seems more entertaining drinking a cold fruity beer from a dinosaur can.”

This customer would be referring to Beer 52’s ‘Dankesaurus Rex IPA’ that is available to purchase in the box. There is also the ‘Soul Train Peach Tea IPA’ and ‘Yeastie boys Classic Hit Extra Pale’ which is sure to leave people amused. 

Brainiac: YoA’s Adam Wheatley

BEER is good for the brain and can actually improve concentration and speed up thought processes, a scientific study has concluded.

New research by Japanese scientists has found that consuming hops also reduces stress levels and improves mood.

And people who took supplements containing bitter hop extracts, displayed better memory recall and were better able to solve mental puzzles.

Scientists based at Juntendo University Faculty of Medicine and the Fukushima Healthcare Center carried out the research on 100 otherwise healthy people aged 45 to 69 who had demonstrated Selective Cognitive Decline (SCD), defined as ‘worsening memory loss’.

Their study suggests that the acid found in bitter hops, and known as MHBA, could be used to help combat dementia.

It found that there was notable improvement in the cognitive function of participants after 12 weeks of taking the supplement.

Breweries will deliver more than 250 million pints to pubs across the UK by mid June.

Brewers appear to be preparing for a summer reopening of the nation’s pubs, with top beer manufacturers producing hundreds of millions of pints for delivery to venues in the coming weeks. Brewers including Heineken, Asahi (Peroni, Grolsch) and Anheuser-Busch (Stella, Budweiser) have resumed manufacture, largely aiming to deliver by June 15.

It’s an amazing turnaround after some beer giants had been forced to cease production at the start of lockdown through fear of new stock going out of date before it could be sold. That said, in recent weeks, dozens of pubs across the country have already partially reopened, serving pints of draught beer to take away.

At the moment, it remains unclear which pubs and pub groups will be able to reopen, even with beer in the barrels. Last week, Fuller’s chief executive Simon Emeny ​said that with a two-metre distancing rule in place, half of the group’s 393 pubs would have to remain shut. A source close to the Young’s group has said the pub chain are not planning to open until early August.

EVERY Spring the world’s top wine tasters, négociants, merchants and oenophiles flock to Bordeaux for the ‘En Primeur’ Tastings. The finest clarets of the previous vintage year from Bordeaux’ exceptional 200 – 300 châteaux are sampled, judged, priced and offered to buy as Futures.

France’s lockdown response to Covid has seen the Bordeaux ‘En Primeur’ Tastings Festival suspended, with doubt about what next to do.

Around 5000 leading experts were set for this year’s ritual from 3o March to 2 April in the world’s wine capital, Bordeaux, to be the first to taste the 2019 vintage from the barrel, destined for bottling and sale two years hence. Uniquely the privileged ‘En Primeur’ élite can place Futures orders there and then at whatever price a producer accepts.

This allows for a huge secondary wine market before the 2019 vintage is bottled ready to reach the market. Fortunes can be made and lost.

The predictions for the 2019 vintage were upbeat, given the success of 2018. Previous top vintages were 2012 and 2011. Worries about China’s thirst for fine wine traditionally sourced via Hong Kong  were already troubling the wine world, alongside a US tariff of 25% on imported French wine.

If you’ve got the buying clout and the reputation, there’s nothing stopping top buyers sourcing direct from producers – but any such deals done during Covid will be done ‘blind’ without tastings. The 2019 wine vintage promises to be fascinating. It might just prove profitable due to Covid alone even if it tastes awful.

WETHERSPOONS boss Tim Martin says he’ll reopen all his pubs in July – but there will be strict social distancing.

The nationwide pub chain closed its doors on 21 March as a result of coronavirus lockdown, but is now planning ahead for a return.

The idea is for all 895 pubs to re-open. However, it depends on the government green lighting the move.

Among the changes will be the introduction of sneeze shields at the tills and a one-way system for toilets.

Floor stickers or barriers will be used to implement a safe walking space, with pubs using one entrance and a separate exit wherever possible.

At least ten hand sanitiser stations will be placed in each pub, with customers being asked to use them on arrival as well as each time they walk past one.

Personal protective equipment, including gloves, masks and eyewear will be provided for staff, but won’t be made mandatory unless the government enforces it.

Punters will have to order food and drinks via the app rather than at the counter, with drinks being delivered on a tray before being placed on the table using the base of the glass to hold them.

JD Wetherspoon chief executive John Hutson said: “We have spent a number of weeks consulting with staff who work in our pubs, as well as area managers in order to draw up our plans. The safety of our staff and customers is paramount.”