Yeastie Boys

For years the brand sprung through growth spurts, until suddenly, it didn’t. Covid hit, and like most beer businesses in the UK, Yeastie Boys felt the effects of the pandemic and its subsequent lockdowns. Once pubs reopened and people were moving freely about—remember our daily mandated walks? Talk about dystopian—things didn’t go back to normal. Stu is sure that Covid “fast-forwarded” a commercialisation or consolidation, perhaps, of the market, something he feels led to the closure of many businesses.

“Pre-covid there were so many independent bottle shops and bars,” he says, “but things have become more structured and many places have closed down. It’s important to us to work with independents more now.” 

The brewery also wanted to help in any way they could while businesses were shuttered and teams were under the stress of not knowing what was happening within the industry from one week to the next. Teaming up with Hospitality Action, a charity focused on the wellbeing and support of individuals working within the hospitality industry, in

any role, meant that Yeastie Boys could support the industry in a meaningful way.

“I think it was Kamilla who used to work with us at Yeastie Boys who found Hospitality Action and they are just a fantastic charity,” says Stu. “We’ve done a couple of projects with them, and now we continue to give a percentage of all of our webshop sales to them because of the work they do.”

This continuation of support ties in with how Yeastie Boys has felt a shifting in how the beer world and hospitality industry operate in the UK post-Covid. After a scary period of closures within industry of both breweries and bars, the way pubs and bars are selling beer has changed, and Stu says this has in turn changed how Yeastie Boys does things.

“We found it harder and harder to justify packaging—it’s only Big Mouth that we can now. We used to sell 85% of our volume in cans, and now we’re selling 95% in keg, so that’s a radical change.” It certainly is; it’s a total 180-degree turn from packaged beer sales to wet-led sales. In layman's terms, this means Yeastie Boys beer is now mostly sold in pubs and bars, rather than on the shelves of supermarkets. It’s a return to the old days, in many ways. 

“Back in the day, we dealt with a lot of specialist independent shops and bars, and that meant people implicitly understood what it was we were trying to do—and what the ingredients we were using were. We could say Nelson Sauvin and it was a given that the people we were selling our beers to knew that’s a New Zealand hop, it tastes like this, it’s used in beers like this,” says Stu.

Yet the variety of pubs and bars Yeastie Boys is selling to has changed since 2009. The craft beer revolution has left a demand for hoppy, indie beers in its wake, even in the largest bar chains, and this has left an unexpected gap in knowledge. After 15 years in the Yeastie Boys game, Stu feels as though he’s educating people about beer again.

“Before it was specialists buying our beer,” he says, "but now it’s more generalists.” These generalists might have traditional pubs with a few lager lines, a Guinness tap, and then a spare for something 'craft'. That’s where Stu comes in, getting Yeastie Boys into pubs where the demand for something different exists, but they’re not sure exactly what it is they want.

“It’s a lot about education and building that connection,” he says. “I’ve always talked about how you can visit any craft beer bar in the world and it somehow feels like you could be anywhere. I’m attracted to more traditional pubs so it’s great to have our beer in them.

“We obviously still work with little independent bars too, one of our favourites is Burrito Buoy in Folkestone. Places and people like that want great beer to go with their great atmosphere and, in their case, amazing burritos, so it’s our pleasure to be able to supply that beer.”

Stu’s love for the traditional British pub is what’s firing him up for the next stage of Yeastie Boys’ evolution. Feeling like he’s put roots down in the UK has given him the feeling he’s a local, and this in turn has made him even fonder of pubs. It turns out there’s no escaping the cultural pull of the pub, no matter how great your tap rooms and bars are back home.

“I love the changes because I love pubs! Back at the beginning I felt like I knew every single person personally who drank Yeastie Boys beer. Then we started selling to hundreds of supermarkets and there was less of that connection possible, but now it feels like we’re back to connecting with the community again,” he says.

The reactions to Yeastie Boys’ steady incursions into mainstream pub culture have been positive; how could anyone not love having Lazy Slam, their hazy Pale Ale, or Superfresh, the flagship Yeastie Boys Helles lager pouring down their local? But as Stu says, it's still got a lot of ground to cover. There are thousands of pubs out there, each with their own teams of people at varying points on the sliding scale of beer education. It sounds like a daunting prospect, but Stu’s raring to get going. In fact, he’s already out there, getting pints of Gunnamatta into the hands of the people.

Oh, that’s right. Gunnamatta, their fan-favourite Earl Grey IPA, once a staple of the Yeastie Boys line-up, is coming back for a special run. What are you waiting for? Get down to the pub and demand they put it on.