We’re hiring an assistant brewer!

Overview

Big Smoke Brew Co is an independent craft brewery based in Esher, Surrey. We are passionate about brewing great beer and sharing it with the world via our 4 pubs operated by Big Smoke Inns, as well as venues at Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton airports. 

This is a great opportunity to join a young business in a fun and dynamic environment. We are looking for an organised and motivated Apprentice Brewer to join our team. The ideal candidate will be wanting to undertake a full apprenticeship programme to gain the required knowledge to advance themselves into the brewing industry. 

The apprenticeship program is run by HIT (Hospitality Industry Training) in conjunction with Nottingham University. The program will be paid for in full including expenses incurred during away days and site visits to the university to the right candidate.

Please see link for more details. 

Brewer Apprenticeship (hittraining.co.uk)  

We are looking for someone to fill the below position.

Job title: Apprentice Brewer

Salary: £18-22k per annum 

Hours: Full time: 37.5 hours

Contract Type: Permanent  

Reports to: Reporting into the Head Brewer

Apprenticeship Overview:

• Duration - 18 months + EPA (End Point Assessment)

• Progression - Progression from this apprenticeship is expected to be into a Senior Brewer role.

• Cost/Funding – Big Smoke Brew Co to cover all costs including on site training and visits to Nottingham campus including expenses for accommodation, food and drink. 

Levy Payers - £9,000

Non-Levy Payers - £540

• Functional Skills - To complete the apprenticeship the apprentice must pass level 2 English and maths (or have the appropriate exemption certificate) before undertaking their end point assessment.

• Professional Support - HIT Training assigns a designated Vocational Trainer to each apprentice. Alongside the apprentice they will agree on a personal learning and development plan, setting a timetable of learning activities in preparation for the End Point Assessment (EPA).

• The HIT Vocational Trainer will meet with the apprentice regularly either online or face to face to complete and review assessments, provide further coaching where required and agree the next steps of learning.

Job Overview:

• Ensuring adherence to our statutory obligations, HACCP Plan, Quality Management System and Health & Safety procedures

• Learning towards - Wort production, monitoring fermentations and performing cellaring tasks on a shift basis

• Learning towards - Performing Quality Control checks in line with our lab requirements

• Taking responsibility for ensuring good overall brewery hygiene 

• Maintaining accurate records in accordance with company policies

• Effectively communicating with all team members

• Learning towards – Packaging operations including keg washing and filling, cask washing and filling & canning.

• Representing the company at industry events  

• The role involves shift work including early mornings, evenings and some weekends

What we are looking for:

• Someone who is hands on

• Good time management

• An organised person with great attention to detail

• Confident with IT systems

• Ability to work as part of a team

• A candidate who can be trusted with confidential information

If this sounds like you, please forward your interest to Nick Blake (Head Brewer, Operations Director) at nick@bigsmokebrew.co.uk

BIG SMOKE BREW CO X TELEGRAMME

BRAND NEW PRINT ALERT
BIG SMOKE BREW CO X TELEGRAMME

When we launched our little brewery in the shed at the back of our pub, The Antelope, 7 years ago, we wanted a strong visual identity that matched our aspirations for the brand. 

We approached Bobby and Kate at Telegramme to bring our brand to life as we’d been fans of their work for some time; their colourful, clean and striking design was exactly the aesthetic we wanted for Big Smoke. 

Seven years later we are still using the same designs that the guys devised for us so it made sense that we’d work with them on a new batch of posters to represent our brewery.

We were keen for our new set of posters to have a timeless, vintage feel to them and to be something that you might want to put on your living room wall.

The posters are printed on high quality art paper, available in A1, A2 and A3 and are ready to be framed. 

We’re really happy with the results and hope you like them too. 

Cheers! 


Big Smoke Brew Co.

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TELEGRAMME IN THEIR OWN WORDS

“With a joint love of fine paper goods and vintage, mid century Americana style, Bobby & Kate Evans started the now award winning Telegramme Paper Co. in London in 2014.

Now based out of their studio by the sea in Margate, they apply their unique illustration style to high quality, original art prints and personalised prints. They exhibit their prints across Europe and the US, and are stocked in shops and galleries across the world, as well as selling from their own online store, Telegramme.co.uk”

Check out the great work of Telegramme on their website here- or follow them on Instagram @telegramme

BIG SMOKE BREW CO X FRIED CACTUS STUDIO

BRAND NEW MERCH ALERT
BIG SMOKE BREW CO X FRIED CACTUS STUDIO.

If you’ve been drinking our beer for a while, you’ll know we love our can designs nearly as much as the delicious stuff inside them. Which is why we’ve been selling them on our merch for over 3 years! Whilst we still absolutely love these designs, we figured it was about time to give you lovely people a new way to wear your favourite (we hope) brewery out and about!

Which is where Fried Cactus Studio comes in! Having been big fans of their work for a while, it made sense to reach out and ask the good folk of Fried Cactus to reimagine some of our most loved designs… And reimagine they did! Say hello to 4 brand new designs which - if we do say so ourselves - are super cool! Think of your most loved band t-shirt, but make it beer. We cant wait to see you out and about in these, check them out and find out more about the people behind the designs below!

Four brand new t-shirt designs available is sizes small to XL now available to buy online! We've also made one of these designs into a canvas bag- perfect for carrying your Big Smoke beers to the park! We hope you love these as much as we do! Shop now at the link below.

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FRIED CACTUS STUDIO
IN THEIR OWN WORDS

Fried Cactus is an illustration and design studio located in Bournemouth, Dorset. Primarily focussing on logo, brand identity and illustration… Creating under a studio allows me to be flexible with my design process, clients and inspiration. The studio is located in a coffee roastery which houses a bunch of other businesses, it's a really inspiring place to be as it's filled with interesting and hard working people from all walks of life. Plus, coffee in tap is a huge win!

I’ve definitely reached a point where creating something every day is good for my sanity. I allow a pretty mixed bag of my interests to inform my work, right now it’s a lot of 90’s music and comic paraphernalia mixed with abstract and simple line work. Inspiration only works when I’m in the right headspace. Which has kind of been a lifelong journey for me, it changes all the time.

Being able to work with such a wide variety of brands is such a blessing because no project is the same. As always, keeping it positive and really grateful to the guys at Big Smoke for letting me design some apparel for them!

Check out the great work of Fried Catcus Studio on their website here- or follow them on Instagram @fried.cactus.studio

BIGGER Smoke - Our path to growth.

For the last four years our little brewery has happily lived at the back of The Antelope, our pub in Surbiton.  The majority of the beer that we have brewed has passed through the pumps of the pub and our brewers have worked behind the bar in various positions - the stories of both the pub and brewery are intertwined to such an extent that it is difficult to imagine one without the other.

Brewing in the back of The Antelope has had a number of advantages for us over the years; no rent or utility bills, a fantastic customer right on our doorstep and a great way to get feedback (good and bad) from drinkers.  Being at the back of the pub has given us a safety net, it has enabled us to make countless mistakes, learn from them and progress. It has allowed us the time to cobble together more equipment to make better beer.  It has enabled our brewers, Nick, Danny and Dez to learn on the job and grow their knowledge base.  It has brought the pub’s lovely customers along on our journey and hopefully shown them how much we’ve grown.

However, it’s not without its drawbacks; space and logistics are a nightmare and it’s all too easy to fall into a relaxed and comfortable mindset, just cruising along producing the same old beers day in, day out, certain that they’ll sell and perhaps not pushing ourselves to be as creative as we could.

For the last year or so we have been looking at ways in which we could grow, we began to contract brew two of our beers which has enabled us to push more of our beer through our own pubs, allowed us the time to experiment and has taught us some valuable lessons about working at greater volumes; but in our hearts we’ve always wanted to brew our own beer in our own brewery.

So now it’s time for us to leave the nest.

Next week we take delivery of a brand new 30 hectolitre brew kit from Gravity Systems, we have secured new premises in Esher (10 minutes down the road from our current site) and have a canning line arriving towards the end of the year.

Our new kit will be capable of brewing 4 times the quantity of beer that we currently produce, or 6000 pints per brew.  It will give us much more control of our process, help us to achieve greater consistency and, importantly, it will enable us to bring all of our production back in-house.  The brewery will be built to our specification, it’s the brewery that we would have bought 4 years ago if we’d had the money or the knowledge.

To achieve all of this we have taken investment from a private individual; someone who shares our values, is passionate about our brand and who is keen to join us on our journey and help take our beer to a broader audience.

We will truly miss our spiritual home at The Antelope - Friday night beers in the garden of the pub, chatting to regulars and inquisitive visitors and being a part of the fabric that makes The Antelope such a special place to us.

For now we are busy building the new brewery and will be winding down production at The Antelope in January when the new kit is commissioned*.  We can’t wait to see what the future holds for our little hobby and we hope that you enjoy coming along for the ride!

Cheers,

Rich, James, Nick, Danny, Sam, Dez, Alex, Dave and Medi.

*Stay tuned for exciting plans for what was the brewery at the back of The Antelope!

It’s not you, it’s me. Why we’re changing the recipe for Solaris.

Solaris is our biggest selling cask beer.  We started brewing it not long after we opened way back in 2014.  The recipe has remained unchanged for almost this entire time, bar a couple of tweaks to the hopping rate and the addition of hop oil.  It has a loyal following, not just in our pubs but in a handful of pubs throughout London where people are attracted to its soft, fruity and approachable style. 

But it needs to change.

As a brewery we have come a long way since we opened.  Our initial output was hit and miss at best and while most of our early misses have been long since culled Solaris is one beer that has managed to sneak under the radar.  Although labelled as a session pale from the outset, Solaris is technically a session bitter, brewed with Cascade and Centennial hops.  It has quietly become a staple at our pubs, The Antelope alone selling anywhere between 5 to 8 casks a week.  As most brewers will tell you, having a permanent line in a pub going through that sort of volume is the stuff of dreams, so why would we change it?

Well, we’ve changed.  In the last year the focus of our business has been moving much more towards keg beer and we are very pleased with the hoppy pales and IPAs that we’ve been producing of late.  We’ve ditched the complex malt bills that we used to brew with and replaced these with more simple, clean and refined combinations which allow the predominantly American hops that we use to shine.

This is where we see the future of our brewery.  We still love cask ale and will continue to both brew it and support it in our pubs but we feel that to progress we need to examine every aspect of what we do and try to do it better.

There will be those of you who rightly ask why we don’t just brew something else and give it a different name?  The truth of the matter is that we love the name Solaris and have spent considerable time and money on the branding of the beer and more recently have applied for the trademark for the name.  These costs can be pretty scary for a small brewery with tight margins.

So, what’s the plan?  

Over the next few months we’ll be trialling various iterations of Solaris with an eye to landing on a recipe that we, and more importantly you, will love.  A version that we feel represents where we are at as a brewery and where we are heading.

The first of these is Version 2.0 which we launched today at our beer festival at The Antelope.  We’re pretty happy with how it’s turned out but there are some changes that we are already planning for the next brew.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on these new versions as they are released and we hope that those of you who love the old Solaris will one day learn to love the new one.

Cheers,

Rich

TAP TAKEOVER AT THE LYRIC, SOHO

Join us on October 25th from 3pm as we take over the taps at this Soho institution.

We'll have loads of our beer on in both keg and cask, including collaboration brews with Electric Bear and 8 Arch, and the whole team will be there to chat.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Cheers.

The Antelope Ale & Cider Festival

Join us from the 15th to 17th of September for a celebration of all things beer and cider!  

Over 50 cask ales and ciders as well as 20 excellent keg beers make this THE event for the discerning beer lover.

Music comes in the form of We Ghosts and The Dimmocks and there'll be a hog roast and BBQ to keep you going.

Free Entry and no tickets - Just bowl up!

New Beer Alert!

Say hello to our newest beer - Cold Spark.

Brewed with one of our favourite hops, Citra, loads of oats and wheat and a touch of lactose for body and creaminess.  We then dry hop with loads more Citra for aroma.

This little beer packs a big flavour punch.