Business Profile: Renegade Brewery

change the name to something else automatically. So what happened was a lot of people in the area that loved our beer, let's say they drink in the Dog and Duck, that used to do five or six firkins a week of Good Old Boy. And they say to the landlord, 'if you take their beer, we will not drink in here anymore'. That has been quite a challenge. So we're gradually mending hearts and minds really. It helped a lot when we switched to Renegade in September. And we sent out an olive branch to all the shareholders, and said: 'Look, it wasn't us that lost your money, we just picked up the assets of the company. But we would like you to still be fans of the new brewery, which is the Renegade, and if you'd like to become a bronze member of our club, which entitles you to 10% off this and 10% off food and free this we’ll give it to you free for a year'. We picked up 500 in a few weeks, so that is good, but we haven't got back into all the pubs that we want to be in yet.”

What is the concept behind Renegade’s beers?

“In about 2015, my head brewer at Randalls, Matt Polli, a brilliant guy, said to me, ‘Why don’t we do a 3D beer?’ Back when we did Hobgoblin we were probably the first to do 2D labels, in other words a pictorial label. This would be 3D, making a model of a character we called Queensbury Jack and creating a 3D pumpclip. So we had this idea but never did anything with it, but we took ownership of the concept and the model. And when I was contacted about WBB I liked the idea because it meant I could finally do something with Queensberry Jack. I knew that in transforming this failed business we needed to work heavily with the craft beer industry, that we needed to focus on craft, but also not throw the baby out with the bathwater and continue with the cask ales. I contacted Dave Noonan [who worked on the packaging and pumpclip designs for Hobgoblin] while I was driving to the brewery one day, and wherever you come into the village of Yattendon, you have to drive through a forest. The next day he phoned me with an idea for the concept for the brewery and Queensbury Jack, with the beers being this group of characters that have left the world of Covid, and the war in the Ukraine and high gas and oil prices behind and just gone to live in the forest. So there was our narrative. I’ve done two Queensberry Jack beers, one at 6.2%, a traditional IPA, which we do on draft, but it's mainly a canned beer. And then we've done a session Queensbury Jack, which is 4.8%. And then WBB already had a Renegade lager, and they did actually set up a company called Renegade, but they never used it, they carried on calling it West Berkshire. We needed the name to change and I liked the name, so we decided to change the name to Renegade Brewery. We've now got a group of beers, based on a group of runaway characters, adventurers, misfits that are ‘the Renegades’. I wanted our stuff to stand

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Quality assured performance guaranteed

KETTLE FININGS

Compac CG, Breakbright tablets

YEAST NUTRIENTS

Yeastlife O, Yeastlife Extra, Servomyces

BEER CLARIFICATION

Proto ne, Protosol, Vic ne, Liquid Isinglass, Alpha oc Paste

FOAM STABILISERS

Drifoam, Foamaid, Allfoam

PVPP/SILICA GELS

Alphaclar (PVPP), Britesorb (Silica hydrogel)

ENZYMES

Betaglucanase, Alpha amylase, ALDC, Aromazyme

ANTI FOAMS

Foamsol

ANTI- OXIDANTS

Vicant

IMPROVE PROCESS EFFICIENCY REDUCE BEER LOSSES

REDUCE PROCESS COST

IMPROVE PRODUCT QUALITY out. I think we do make the best possible beer. But there's a lot more to selling beer than just having fantastic quality beer, you've got to make it look desirable to the consumer, and I think ours do look desirable to the consumer.”

We have a difference here, we're much bigger, the plant here is incredible. So I want to try and eventually get our beers into the bigger operators.

How will you make Renegade stand out from the crowd?

“We have a difference here, we're much bigger, the plant here is incredible. So I want to try and eventually get our beers into the bigger operators. In a similar way to someone like Beavertown I don't want to sell my beer cheap for £1 a can and I don't think I need to sell my beer at £6.50 a can, but we can make equally great beer at somewhere in between those figures. So we will have our standard beers, which are fabulous, the new lager that we've got, Renegade Master, they've never done a 5.1% one before and it's absolutely fantastic. But we will also do the specialist hazy one-offs too. And eventually we're big enough to be able to get into one of the better supermarkets with this stuff, because we're already with the supermarkets but with our Good Old Boy [4% ABV traditional best bitter]. It’s a long process. We are going to remain independent, because that's the way that the business wants to be, they want this as a long term business.”

What are your key goals for the business in 2023 and beyond?

“We have to increase sales of our own beer by 50%. So not only have I got fabulous looking canned beer, that tastes great. We're also doing the 3D pump clip, which I think is key. It's quite unique. And when we've put it into my son's pub, the Star in Oxford, literally people walk up to the bar they look at it and they go, ‘What's that?’ And they have a taste, ‘I like that, I’ll have a pint of that, please.’ That's how it works. So we believe that we can possibly get to a 50% increase in our own beer sales. And then we are increasing our brew and pack third party contracts by 50%. And we've already managed to do that - we picked up 8,000hl in the last month. We are developing our online sales and we've just gone live with Amazon as well.”

How are you approaching the issue of sustainability?

“I'm glad you asked this question because we're right at the forefront of this. We are building a water treatment plant to treat our effluent and return it to the ground. And we've got loads of ground for it to return to. We're installing solar panels on our huge roof space. And solar will be able to supply all the electricity that we need, including charging, and we’re changing our drays from diesel to electric. We're installing our own nitrogen plant, literally at the moment, which will see a reduction in our CO2 use. We're growing our own barley, because we've got 12,000 acres. We're looking at establishing a hop garden, which will mean that we're nearly self-sufficient because we have a borehole that we're going to start using for our own water as well. So we'd then have our own water, our own malted barley, our own hops, and we will re-use our yeast with the yeast propagation system. We are also recycling all our materials - cardboard, plastic, metals, glass, food and batteries. Nothing from here goes to landfill.”

What does success look like to you?

“I have been very lucky. I've had two successful brewery and pub company businesses. I grew my first brewery from small beginnings to a £30 million turnover business and a household name beer before I was 40. I transformed Randalls of Guernsey into a vibrant brewery, distillery, wine merchant and pub company. And success here will be to establish Renegade Brewery as a successful, profitable business. With recognised beer brands in both craft and traditional cask, that in time will become household names. To be known for producing amazing, flavoursome beers, and make this company a place where everyone that works here is happy in their work and proud of what we do.”

Who do you most admire in the craft beer sector and why?

“I've worked with lots of amazing people. I couldn't have achieved the success at Wychwood and Randalls without them. But I have worked with two standout characters. The first one was my first boss at Bass. He had great focus, attention to detail, intellect and was good at setting goals for the future. And I learned a lot from him. That's a guy called Peter Swinburne. And the other person was James Coyle, who worked for me as a sales director. I think he is an exceptional talent. He was at Innis & Gunn and I think he's at Freedom at the moment. Then in the craft sector, I admire Verdant, Deya and Beak. I know nothing about them. But I like what they're doing. And I like their beer. They are merchants of quality.”