My quarter centry and the things I've learnt

DURING A BREWING CAREER THAT HAS SPANNED 26 YEARS TO DATE, FERGUS FITZGERALD HAS LEARNED A GREAT DEAL. IN THAT TIME, THE HEAD OF PRODUCTION AT ADNAMS SAYS IT’S IMPORTANT TO SAY ‘YES’ MORE THAN YOU SAY ‘NO, AND TO NEVER

Back in 2020, Tim Sheahan asked me if I’d do a talk on dealcoholisation at one of the Brewers Lectures in Norwich, which I happilyagreed to do. We are really proud of whatwe’ve done with Ghost Ship 0.5 since westarted in mid 2018.Obviously that event was cancelled butwhen it was rearranged for 2021 Timasked again, and again I agreed, but asAdnams had talked quite a bit about Lowand No over the past 12 months that itdidn’t feel like the right topic.After a bit of email back and forth, hesuggested that I talk a bit about what I’dlearnt as a brewer. It turns out I’ve beenin the brewing industry for 26 years soit was probable that I will have learntsomething in that time.So here we are.

My starting point in brewing was atemporary lab tech at Fuller’s, wayback in 1995. I’d just finished studyingBiotechnology in Waterford in Irelandand due to a historical relationship withFuller’s I was offered the chance to headacross the water to London.I grew up on a small farm in Limerick,Terry Wogan country for those unfamiliarwith the Counties of Ireland. As anaside I found out years later that thefather of Evin O’Riordain, founder of TheKernel, actually taught me when I was inWaterford.I had never been out of Ireland and as araging Introvert from a family of introvertsit didn’t immediately feel like the obvious

route, but then neither did staying in ruralIreland where the most likely path wasgetting a job in the local dairy laboratoryand putting cheese through a stomacherthat had been stored at 50oC.

If you neither know what a stomacher is,or what cheese smells like that has beenstored at 50oC and then put through astomacher, then you may not appreciatehow easy a decision it was to head toLondon.

That probably brings me to the first thingI think I’ve learnt, and that’s to say yes,more than you say no.

To regularly try things that scare you, todo things that make you uncomfortableand challenge you. I was shy, introverted,not confident so it would have beeneasier for me to stay in Ireland but I left. Iknow our HR director will tell me that I’mwrong and that I need to say no muchmore than I do, but the things I’ve saidyes to have brought me joy.My interest in beer at this point waslargely in its consumption and myknowledge of styles was limited to theholy trinity of Lager, Guinness and thebrown one that no one really drank,Smithwick’s.That changed quite quickly as myprimary job was running the tasting roomat Fuller’s, otherwise known as the Cage.Reg Drury was still Head Brewer then.

John Keeling and Reg would come to thetasting room every day to taste the beers.

I think it was through this, listening to them passionately discuss the beers and the subtlety of the changes that really sparked my interest in beer. After six months I returned to Ireland, having first suggested they recruit a friend of mine from Waterford, while I took a temporary Lab job in Murphy’s Brewery in Cork. I think at that stage I had decided breweries were the place for me. When that came to an end another job had come up in Fuller’s so I returned to London in January 1997. As it happened during the year I’d been back in Ireland, Fuller’s had recruited a number of friends that I’d studied Biotechnology with from Waterford, so it was like a home from home.

Gradually I made my way through the laboratory roles, into some quality management work, which I couldn’t really get excited about. John Keeling had taken over as head brewer by then and Georgina Young had come in as brewing manger.

George asked if anyone was interested in doing the IBD exams and she even volunteered to help people study. At that point I knew I wanted to be in production making the beer so along with four or five others I signed up. I progressed through the levels to get my Master Brewer in 2008. I might be the only person to have been presented with my Master Brewer twice, as a year earlier

at the brewing dinner Tim O’Rourke called me up to accept my Master Brewer award, despite the fact I hadn’t sat the final exam.

So the next thing I’ve learnt is really around learning. In whatever way that suits you, keep learning, as there is always more to know, Never believe you have all the answers and keep challenging what you think you know. Don’t rely on inherited wisdom as there are many reasons an idea fails, only one of them is that the idea was wrong. Sometimes things fail because we didn’t know enough to know that we don’t know enough. So make your own mistakes and keep learning.

I left Fuller’s in 2004, having finished my diploma in brewing through the IBD, and despite initially wanting to move closer to my partner’s family in Liverpool, the temptation of an assistant brewers job at Adnams proved too great. It was an amazing time to be joining Adnams as unlike many established breweries, they had decided to reinvest into brewing, into actually making beer. While lots of breweries were considering pulling out or downsizing, Adnams was rebuilding, replacing Victorian era equipment with state-of-the-art kit.

The first stage, installing new fermenters, was mostly completed when I joined. The next stage was only just starting, which involved designing a new brewhouse, which was installed in 2007. Mike Powell Evans was head brewer at the time, and seeing in the new brewhouse was his final gift to the brewery as he retired in 2008.

I knew Mike would be retiring when I joined four years previously but I didn’t see myself as head brewer material. Head brewers were people like Reg Drury, or John Keeling or Mike, people of stature, people who were definite in what the right course of action was. You needed gravitas to be a head brewer and that wasn’t me. Except that I was asked to take over as head brewer so unexpectedly I was the thing that I didn’t think I could be. I think everyone is now familiar with the

idea now that having role models is so important, I think it’s also important to realise that people aren’t always how you perceive them.

There is still a prevalence of belief that people in positions of authority are there because they know more than you, that they are cleverer, that they see things that you don’t, but the truth in most cases is that we all make decisions based on the balance of what we know, what we’ve experienced, that most decisions live in the grey. There are no definite outcomes but we expect our leaders to be confident in what they ask us to do, we don’t want probabilities, we want certainty, so they show that back to us. For a long time I thought I had to find a way of being more confident but actually I’ve learnt is that leadership is about accepting the uncertainties and, when you need to, making a decision anyway.

When I took over as head brewer Adnams was part of a head brewers group called the International Wine Buyers Consortium. I won’t explain why it was called that in the hope that some sense of mystery transfers to me through my membership. The name changed a few years ago to the much more descriptive ‘Head Brewers Group’ but the function stays the same, to allows head brewers to complain about malsters. No, not really.

It allows brewers to exchange ideas about the issues of the day, whether it was technical brewing issues, raw materials, legislation, or whatever else comes across the head brewer’s desk. It’s of the most use for breweries where often the only technical brewers are the head brewers themselves.

In those early few years having the ability to call up people like Roger Ryman and ask for his opinion was a huge comfort to me, and I would encourage any brewer to find something similar. Just a group of people that share the same issues that can help, or just empathise, and ideally call it something more mysterious than the ‘Head Brewers Group’.