Featuring: Good Things Brewing

Article
By Ollie Nicholas
01/02/20

Subtitle

Good Things Brewing by Chris Drummond and Co.

Contents

1. Practice what you preach

2. Good Things Brewing was born...

3. About Good Things Brewing

4. Creating a model to follow

Good Things Brewing by Xavier Buendia

Good Things Brewing Co are a closed loop, fully sustainable brewery based in the South East of England. They bore their own water, create their own power and turn their spent brewers grain in to flour which is used all over from pizza restaurants to bakeries. This is their story, as told by Good Things Brewing co-founder, Chris Drummond.

Subtitle

Good Things Brewing by Chris Drummond and Co.

Contents

1. Practice what you preach

2. Good Things Brewing was born...

3. About Good Things Brewing

4. Creating a model to follow

Good Things Brewing Co are a closed loop, fully sustainable brewery based in the South East of England. They bore their own water, create their own power and turn their spent brewers grain in to flour which is used all over from pizza restaurants to bakeries. This is their story, as told by Good Things Brewing co-founder, Chris Drummond.
1. Practice what you preach

An event is not defined by the available refreshments, but no one’s complaining if there’s a decent spread available. The best party I ever went to was centred around a big pot of chilli, and whilst the Extinction Rebellion talk at Accept and Proceed in March didn’t offer any kind of Mexican food, it did offer free beer. This beer wasn’t one I’d had before, and quite fittingly for an Extinction Rebellion talk, it was a beer that was crafted with sustainability as its core principle. The brand was called Good Things Brewing, it tasted delicious and the design of the can was cool, so I quickly scribbled down their name before the talk started.

I always get excited when a brand or product that I like is environmentally conscious. This is something that I have seen amongst a few beer brands, and upon deeper thought, it dawned on me that the beer industry realistically could make major changes to improve its sustainability. This wouldn’t necessarily happen overnight, but there is a lot of potential for environmentally positive changes to take place.

When I did a bit more research into Good Things Brewing, it was clear that they practiced what they preached. Their operation went so much further than just recycling a few boxes and plastering sustainability buzz words all over their cans. From their brewing to their waste, the meticulous focus on living by their message was clear. I recently had the pleasure of connecting with Good Things Brewing, Chris Drummond who has kindly filled me in on all the amazing work that they’ve been doing. I’ll definitely have to stop by for a beer soon! Over to you Chris…

Good Things Brewing by Xavier Buendia

2. Good Things Brewing was born...

The idea of the brewery came during a three year transition period in my life, moving on from an industry and career that I was not happy in. I had previously spent 15 years in the HVAC Engineering world, where I went from apprentice to Managing Director (MD) only to find that my aspirational needs were not met, despite fighting my way to the top of the ladder in my respective industry. I soon realised that I needed to go on my own mission to seek out a career that would fulfil my need to create change for good. 

Towards the end of my MD position, I started up a craft beer club called ‘Crafted Crate’ with a long term friend, Russell Wheildon. We would head up and down the country hunting down the best beers we could, and hand pick the UK’s finest to go out to our customers on a monthly subscription. We quickly found that we loved the industry, the people in it and what it stood for; putting great beer in the hands of more people, and replacing corporate imported beer with independently brewed and loved produce. Not only does the industry do these things well, they do it collectively under a shared mission. 

Whilst travelling the UK’s best breweries, I noticed all of the inefficiencies and indeed efficiencies within the brewing process, its resources and its waste products. With each brewery we would go to, I would write down lists of what worked, what did not, what would cause issues at some point and how these issues could be resolved. I initially thought we would use the beer club’s profits to help breweries up and down the country change the way in which the brewing industry thinks in regards to being sustainable and finding self sufficient energy solutions. This felt like a great idea however we could not any gain traction because no one would listen as we did not own a brewery ourselves. 

By this point, we were already thinking that we wanted in on the beer industry more than we currently were, which prompted us to start looking at building a brewery for ourselves. Once we decided to open our own brewery, that was it. We started telling our story to as many people as we possibly could until more and more people started to listen, and Good Things Brewing was born.

Good Things Brewing brewery by Xavier Buendia

Inside Good Things Brewing brewery by Xavier Buendia

3. About Good Things Brewing

Our brewery is our story and our mission. Together as a team, we work to create the best product we can without causing unnecessary harm to the planet. We’re a closed loop, a fully sustainable brewery based in the South East. We bore our own water, create our own power and turn all of our spent brewers grain to flour which is used all over from pizza restaurants to bakers, and we are soon to treat all of our own waste on site. 

The first stage of building our brewery is complete, we are self sufficient within all our processes, and we are looking to the next step of taking control of the inbound packaging to our site. From hop bags to malt bags, packaging to plastics, we are now looking at on-site solutions to break-down these materials, recycle and then re-purpose for our own or our customers needs. We will work with our suppliers to cut back what we can, but some materials will have to stay as they are due to hygiene and health reasons. Nevertheless, bit by bit we will make sure that zero waste leaves our site.

We also recently bought our first electric van, which was not so simple with the lack of options that are currently available. Either the mileage is too low or the payload is not high enough. However, with a change in our routes and the way we think about delivering, we have managed to make it work, and it has actually become a fun challenge to try and get back to the brewery without facing total embarrassment within our team. 

Longer term we would like to look at packaging solutions, changing the way we get beer to local consumers. I currently have a few ideas on this but it is still very early days and we’re still testing some things. 

Inside Good Things Brewing brewery by Xavier Buendia

Inside Good Things Brewing brewery by Xavier Buendia

4. Creating a model to follow

My mission is to create a model that can be repeated. The idea of having one sustainable brewery is pretty useless, but the idea of having all craft breweries in the UK running self sufficiently could have a knock-on effect to the big corporate breweries. We know this because it has happened time and time again; corporate breweries are developing more craft styles and are forced to look at their environmental impact because the smaller guys are. Consumers have started to buy based on brands that show an awareness to their surroundings, and I really believe that we could end up with all breweries, and possibly many other industries honing in on being more responsible. 

The drive for me began when I was living in the Alps, being in awe of their beauty and never taking for granted just how lucky I was to ride a snowboard in such an inspiring environment. At the same time, visually seeing the effects that humans were having on the planet, I started to question how we were living on this planet. If I am completely honest, it is as much about planet sustainability as it is business sustainability. It takes so much to get a company up and running, and if processes of efficiency could give every small company a better chance of survival then I am all in. 

My passion for the outdoors grew enough to become a drive in how we do things now. I would love to inspire others to do the same; create better solutions and share them with us and everyone else one step at a time.  

‘Drunken Jockeys' / Good Things Brewing by Will Burchill

Good Things Brewing brewery by Xavier Buendia

  • Featuring: Good Things Brewing

Bibliography

Good Things Brewing (www.goodthingsbrewing.co)

Social

Good Things Brewing (@goodthingsbrewingco)
Xavier Buendia (@xavi.buendia.photo)
Will Burchill (@willburchillphoto)

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