Full name: Jack Williams
Role: Owner / Operator
DOB: 24.04.87
Birthplace: Falmouth
Twitter: @blackrockbrewco
Website: http://www.blackrockbrewing.com/
Fun Fact: “I can hold my breath for north of 3 minutes, though it’s never come in handy.”
Hello (again) fellow Jack! OK, let’s start at the beginning then – did you always know that brewing was on the cards for you? Have you always been something of a ‘foodie’? Where did you learn to homebrew and is it just you who does it all at the moment? You started out at university right?
I’d definitely been day dreaming about brewing for a few years before I started out properly. I’m not sure I ever told anybody about the idea though, which is why it always comes as a surprise when I bump into some old-time uni or college pal and they say something like ‘Oh wow! It’s so great that you’re making beer! You always said you would but I never thought you’d actually…’ I’m pretty sure I kept the idea under wraps – I knew Falmouth didn’t have a brewery and I didn’t want to seed the idea with someone else and have them mobilise before I was able to! But yeah, I’ve wanted to make beer for a long time, and maybe I’m not as good at keeping secrets as I thought!
Growing up in the licensed trade I’ve been around beer my whole life, and importantly gained a feel for what makes a good one. The flip side of that is I’ve always been around good food too! Mum was always too busy to cook (she does make a mean Greek Salad though) but we usually had a professional kitchen to hand so instead of homely dishes I was raised on restaurant food – I’ve got no love for classics such as mac n cheese but boy do I like my food in small portions and on enormous plates! At times though, when the brewery workload is high, food is just fuel: gotta eat to keep moving.
I started out just brewing alone – I found solace in the process and in my own company – but soon I realised that to make the business grow I’d need help, especially on the production side. These days, a year in, I’ve dropped from head brewer to something like Second Assistant Brewer… Most of my brew day is spent between the desk and Dray (‘dray’ is the name of the wagon on which beer is delivered).
Leading from that, how did the idea for Black Rock Brewing come about and how has the experience been (so far) of bringing it all to fruition? You were officially founded on 1st June 2012?
Way back in 2009 I was about to open up a bar called BLACK ROCK. In the 11th hour I ended up going with a different name, but knew the name Black Rock had something good going on and that I’d save it for another project. Put the clocks forward a few years and bingo, the brewery had a name. The name and brand was the all-important first piece of the puzzle, and everything else that followed stemmed from that.
It’s been far from plain sailing though – it’s been about a year and a half since we started selling beer, and we’ve experienced a heck of a lot of growth – but every now and then we hit a bottleneck (excuse the pun). Last Summer we reached the limits of cask population – for every cask of beer you sell, you need about four in circulation (the one sold, the one in the brewery conditioning, the one already racked in the customer’s cellar and the one empty awaiting collection) – I was having to visit customers and running down into their cellars, seeing how much bee was left in the near-empty cask that was being served from, BUY THE LAST COUPLE OF PINTS, and then take the empty up to the brewery to sterilise and fill it straight away again… It was a long, hot Summer.
Good news is that this year we have double the number of casks in the system (nearly 200 now), but don’t be surprised if you’re in Fal and you spot a crazed looking young man buying a couple of beers and then legging it!
What’s the meaning of your motto “tight lines, good times”? – it sounds kinda nautical
I get out and cycle and fish as much as possible (usually one or the other, but on some glorious occasions I do one to get to the other) and a couple of friends and I got into the habit of saying either ‘Tight chains’ or ‘Tight lines’ as a parting phrase, and we realised that life is all about just that: the tight lines and the good times.
Speaking of nautical, you’re a Falmouth lad, right? Do you feel that’s had any effect on what you’re doing with food and drink these days? You named this thing after the Black Rock, afterall…
Yessir! Falmouth has EVERYTHING to do with what I do. Falmouth’s a leading light in Cornwall’s food and drink scene and it’s a pleasure to be part of the fabric of that thriving culture.
Could you tell us more about the three beers in your core range (Pale, Deep, Black IPA) – the differences in how they are made, how you came up with the ideas and refined the recipes etc.
Unlike a WHOLE LOAD of small breweries, at Black Rock I’ve always believed in only make a small number of beers, but making them really, really well. We have three beers in our core range (hell, our only range!) and we’ve taken our time about it. Each beer starts life as an idea or a rough concept chewed over amongst our close friends and then we begin designing it from the ground up. There are SO many variables in brewing so we start off with easier ones, the ones which have biggest impact on the beer (malt & hops and then work our way down through mash temp and yeast strain and fermentation temp and eventually we’re left with the beer all planned out. And then we brew.
Ten times out of ten (or three out of three in our case) the beer turns out as expected, we taste it, get a bunch of pals up to the brewhouse to have a go, then we usually fettle it a little bit to really dial it in as an iconic beer… Then we go out and sell it! There’s a lot of pleasure to be had in the tweaking and refining the recipe stage, but it’s frustrating having to wait a fortnight between brewing and the beer being ready to taste.
Our three beers each went through this process and now we have Pale – 4.2% – An iconic golden ale with a with a clean, crisp palate balanced by a fruity citrus hop character; Deep – 5.0% – A full bodied bitter that balances its malt backbone with bold US hop flavour and our most speciality beer: Black IPA – 6.0% – A midnight black IPA that’s unexpectedly light and clean on the palate – bitter and aromatic in equal measures. Excitingly we’re in the late planning stages of our fourth beer, so at some point we should have a brand new beer out in the wild.
There’s a lot of people doing the craft beer thing at the moment. How are you guys differentiating yourself from everybody else? is it a challenge or is the market big enough for everybody?
Boy is there. The market for craft beer is growing and growing, and a whole load of small breweries are popping up. This is good news because both competition and more consumer choice is a really good thing. The crowding does mean that you have to work harder to stand out and succeed, but again that’s no bad thing! At Black Rock we differentiate ourselves with our location – Falmouth’s a heck of a town, did I mention? And with our attitude – the beer and brand really is an extension of our lifestyle, and it encapsulates the joy and camaraderie of living and working on the Cornish peninsular.
You also produce in small batches, right? Is that out of necessity, choice or both? Is there much variance on a batch by batch basis?
Oh jeez, yeah, small by most brewers’ standards. We brew a 3-barrel brewlength, meaning we produce about 500 litres of beer per brew. I think you can probably stop using the term small batch when your brewlength is over 3000 litres.
Asides from beer (I assume!) what other drinks are you partial to?
I mix a mean Dark ‘n Stormy – Crabbies ginger beer over ice with Goslings black label rum layered on top, garnished with a thumb-pressed lime and a dash of Angostura bitters.
I read that you are/were developing a Raspberry Pi based fermentation controller! At the risk of getting a wee bit technical, could you tell us how that’s working for you? I love these kind of projects…
Of course. So brewing is about control. And cleaning. It’s mainly about cleaning. But after cleaning, the next most important thing is control. Most of the processes we want really precise control over are – at the moment – controlled by PID controllers. In our case we set a target temperature, and the controller switches on or off a heating or cooling circuit to try and maintain the target temp. PID controllers are great tools, but they’re also dumb.
If I wanted to hit a temp once a certain amount of time had past, or start a cooling circuit, but only once a sensor reached a certain trigger temp, I couldn’t do it. With my Raspberry Pi system, I’m going to have a very, very smart system that will centralise the control for a number of different brewery processes, and all the sensors will run on very tidy bundles of CAT5 cable, and my only worry will be that BREWNET becomes self aware.
Where do you see the British beer/ale scene going in the next few years, and what’s your part in it?
The British scene is typically a couple of years behind the US scene (don’t feel bad though, you should see how far behind the european craft brewing scene is…yikes!) so it’s not too much of a stretch to think that the ‘Growler Fill’ will continue to gain traction over here. I think that there’s also a chance that mead could make a bit of a comeback… We’ll see though – there’s a finite (and shrinking) amount of honey produced per year.
What’s your greatest/most memorable professional moment been, so far?
My professional moments are few and far between! One of my favourite stories though is about the head honcho of large and long-established brewery in the region, being handed a beer (in his own pub!) by one of his stooges. He takes a sip and announces something along the lines of “EUREKA! BY JOVE! HOLY MACKEREL! We’ve really hit the nail on the head with this new celebrity chef beer collaboration of ours haven’t we boys? Boys…?” Awkward silence follows. The bartender pipes up: “Ummm, that’s Black Rock Pale, from Falmouth…”
Where do you get your ideas?
Everything influences me, some things more than others. There are loads of breweries and beers that I love admire and respect, and there’s also an awful lot of non-beer products I like as well, they can be pretty inspiring. I love fishing and camping, so I keep an eye out for any exciting developments in those fields… my best ideas are collaborative though I think. One or other of me or my friends puts out the germ of a good thing, and then we field test it as group, and if it’s good it might end up being taken further by one or all of us. Pretty airy-fairy answer… sorry!
What’s your philosophy, summed up in a sentence?
Get Rich or Die Trying… JOKE! I think I was once asked a similar question at a very dry seminar on something I wasn’t especially interested in and it bombed then too. My personal philosophy sits somewhere between “be excellent to one another” and “tight lines, good times”.
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve had, how did you overcome it, and what did you learn from it?
Biggest challenge to date was the long hot summer of 2014. Our beer cooling systems couldn’t cope with the extended heatwave and we ended up having to pour two batches of beer away, it was heartbreaking! To cope with it I built an emergency cold storage room. Only problem was I forgot to store a critical fining agent in the cold room, and at temperatures above 22C it denatures and ceases to effectively clear beer. Beer with heat haze is a hard sell. We learned a lot (namely always read the datasheet) and we’ve got a robust system in place ready for the summer ahead.
What do you enjoy most and least about what you do?
I completely love problem solving and in a growing brewery, there’s normally no end of areas that have the potential to work a little more efficiently. As well as that, I really enjoy managing Black Rock as a brand – there’s something a bit ridiculous yet satisfying about building and protecting a brand that’s important to you, and a lot of thought goes into every little tangible and intangible aspect of the business.
I don’t really like selling the beer. I mean I love selling it, but I don’t really enjoy going out and asking people to buy it.
What advice would you give to aspiring food and drink entrepreneurs who’d want the kind of results that you’ve had?
I’d always tell someone to go for it, 110% – but be prepared to put in more than you bargained for!
If you weren’t doing what you do now, what would you be doing instead?
If I wasn’t so busy at the moment I’d be out touring around Cornwall on my bike and wild camping in my hammock, trying to catch fish from the shore (not my strong suit). As a career alternative? I’m not sure I’d rush to work for anyone else again, so I’d look to learn another craft, ideally one involving custom motorcycles.
If you could get anyone to try your beer (fictional or real, living or dead) who would you pick and which of the beers would you like them to try? Assume that they go on to be your brand ambassador…
Unquestionably an Attitude-era Stone Cold Steve Austin… The ‘Texas Rattlesnake’ would have loved to smash open a couple of cans of Deep after a dishing out a couple of ‘stunners. Obviously, I’m going to need to start canning to realise this dream!
What’s your ultimate aim and goal for the business? If you could achieve anything with it, what would you pick? Money and reality are no obstacle, so shoot for the moon…
My goal is to really put Falmouth on the map beer-wise. We’re a long way from pretty much everywhere, but I want to be said in the same breath as ‘Camden’ or ‘Brooklyn’.
Where next for you and the business?
We’re on an upward curve and we’re already just about maxing out the space at our current premises… Next stop is a bigger site which will allow us to continue to grow and to do other exciting things, like tours, and BBQs, etc.
And we always ask three customary ridiculous questions…
If you were given an infinite budget but had to spend it all on entirely frivolous stuff, what are the first 3 things you’d buy, and why?
1. A miniature steam railway. Less Hornby, more ride-on. There used to be an amazing one in mid-Cornwall but when I looked it up recently to check out opening times so I could take my 10-year-old sister along (- sure), I found out it closed down about 10 years ago and an Aussie bought all the trains! What the hell!
2. I’ve got a thing for Cabins. Cabin porn is a thing – it is NOT, I hasten to add, as seedy as the name would suggest – picturesque cabins in the wilderness. We’re pretty light on true wilderness in this country, but there’s a couple of lovely spots on the Roseland Peninsular that would be greatly improved with a cabin!
3. A live in chef.
You’ve been forced to (somehow) convert Black Rock Brewing into either a death metal band or gangsta rap group, and commercial success is guaranteed. So, which would you choose, what would your first album be called, what would the music be all about and who would you collaborate with in the music industry?
Alllllll about the gangster rap. Though with a name like ‘Black Rock’, I guess it could go either way… First album would be called ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ and would be packed with thinly veiled yet awkward allusions to a drug and violence culture that our group of relatively well-educated and all-things-considered-pretty-fortunate Cornish caucasian rappers have no business rhyming about. We would probably have a long list of artists looking to collaborate with us. You know, all the greats: Sisqo, Wyclef, ‘Diddy (?), probs lil’ Kim – she seems nice.
If you had to have any character from Greek mythology come and work with you at the brewery, who would you employ?
Who’s the guy who pushes the rock up the hill? Sysyphus? (Sp.) He sounds like an ideal candidate for the job!