Mash Gang Brewery Q&A with The Owner

At this time of year lower ABV beers come into their own so as part of a look into innovation in craft beer I sat down with one of the UK’s most exiting no/low alcohol craft beer brewery Mash Gang to find out more about their 0% beers and how they make them. Here’s what the owner and brewer Jordan had to say…

Why did you start all this?

I just found a lot of alcohol-free beer off-putting, not because it was bad, or because it was boring – which it was – but it was the approach that sucked the most. The worst thing was there was a lot of the apologetic style marketing about the whole thing, all a bit cringe-inducing like everything seemed to be saying; “I’m sorry for making this product.”

The vibe was all about making the product passable if you’re driving or unable or unwilling to drink alcohol, but it just felt like it was compromising itself before even started. Not only did I think that was rather sad but also the range of beers leaned heavily towards just lager or, at best, pale ales and seemed scared of doing anything else. I wanted to make really weird alcohol-free beer inspired by breweries like on Omnipollo or Amundsen who were making pastry stouts and fruit sours with wedding cake or whatever thrown into it! I wanted to do that but keep it alcohol free.

That means you do make some pretty crazy stuff, is that still a challenge to get it accepted?

I still get asked: “what’s the difference between a heavily fruited sour and just a fizzy smoothie?” and while its frustrating but I don’t care any more. I’m here to make beverages and it doesn’t really matter whether it’s this or that, you know? I‘ll get a comments all the time where it’s, “I don’t know if it’s a beer at all.” Does it matter? I like it. Do you like it? Yeah? That’s good enough isn’t it? Sometimes you feel like it’s not and that’s weird to me.

Whats the science – how the heck is it done?

I literally can’t tell you. I’ve worked so hard on making this thing a reality there’s no secret inside info, sorry!

What I can tell you is when it comes to it removing all of the alcohol from a full ABV beer it is very expensive and time consuming as well as energy consuming. So we started looking at things like modified yeasts to create these beers to start with. These types of yeasts make very little alcohol from from the sugar in the brew but although it worked we found that those beers tasted sludgy or just sugary, so we started to design a new process that that was almost the reverse of making an imperial stout. We saw this over and over all the times when we’re around cuckoo breweries that work with a lot of Imperial stouts so we did just that – reverse it. Obviously there’s more to it but we wanted to make sure that everything we did worked. We were very vigilant and exacting but it seemed to click more times than it didn’t so we executed it until we were happy and then scaled it up.

Who is your audience, your target customer?

Anyone really. We didn’t just want to market to people who were sober or were trying to look for some kind of dietary hack like cutting calories or losing weight, that was never the idea. We wanted to market to people like us, we want to market to people who wanted to actually not drink less and be able to drink more! I also wanted to make sure that it was available in pubs and bars where you have to drive to. People are only are able to stay around and drink as long as the driver will stay. So if you give them a genuine craft beer experience where they can have four pints, then people are going to stay at the bar longer. It’s better for the bar and better for the customer. The time of going into a bar at lunchtime from your office sink three pints and coming back to work in the afternoon is for the most part over. I was doing that 10 years ago, I was having pints at lunch and the evening too. It’s not healthy or sustainable so we’re looking at helping anyone that still wants to enjoy beer but wants to regulate it better while still trying exciting beer.

What next for the brewery?

It’s no secret the overwhelming success and thirst for Mash Gang has left us having to learn fast and we’ve make mistakes along the way. We’re very open about it on our mailer to both customers and trade. Sometimes getting beer made on schedule, delivered to the right people and in one piece has failed for one reason or another. But you reset, learn, and keep moving forward. We have already improved as much as we’ve grown so we’re in a happy space.

As part of our expansion plan, we have taken the decision to restart production of kegs. We have never experienced a demand for draught beer at this level before so the timing is right. This means the phase moves from cans in hands to pints in pubs through the festive time and into 2024 until we are represented in a bar in every major and minor UK city. There’s even plans to crack America but one step at at time. Needless to say we’re excited for this year coming and appreciate every order every day, it’s still a thrill.