Stories Beer with brothers
Roll out the barrel
Members of the Masonic Craft Beer Society explain how their passion for ale and socials led to the first fully-fledged beer Lodge. We join them in conversation W O R D S P E T E R WAT T S P O R T R A I T S J O O N E Y W O O D WA R D
N E I L-TH O MAS ALLE N The Masonic Craft Beer Society (MCBS) grew out of the first lockdown. Some of us belong to a WhatsApp group, which we used to stay in touch and to keep each other sane. Every Friday night we met on Zoom and we’d start by talking about the different beers we were drinking. There was a lot of interest and we saw this could become a thing. We launched on Facebook with the initial idea of creating an online database of all the beers we’d been trying, with a description and rating. Within 24 hours, we had around 300 members who were keen to get involved. N E I L MARS HALL What is craft beer? That is a contentious question but we take a general view that the brewery should be relatively small and innovative. TI M H I LLI E R - B ROO K Part of my thought process was that we were all drinking slightly different styles. My dad in his Lodge in Brighton is a best bitter guy, while I was drinking over-the-top super-hoppy IPAs, and, of course, there is so much stuff in between. I felt we could build on this as there is so much to appreciate with the different types of beer. All it takes is some 26
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