Marching to the beat of its own drum (and bass)
Small but mighty, Bristol punches above its weight in the creativity category. Lost and Grounded is similar, but different.
Robyn Gilmour
Saturday 08 February 2025
This article is from
Beer Cities UK
issue 114
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“Now let me think, what have we been up to this year?”
This is how every conversation with Alex Troncoso begins. The innocuous question “what’s new?” turns on a tap, which drips steadily with news of new accounts won, festivals sponsored and beers brewed. There is never a dull moment at Lost and Grounded, something the brewery has in common with Bristol. When Alex and partner Annie, the brewery’s two co-founders, first visited the city almost ten years ago now, Alex says “it felt like freedom” in a way he still struggles to put his finger on today.
“I think it's probably the same everywhere to an extent, but Bristol has a real appreciation for people who do unique things,” he says, which in a way, gave Lost and Grounded a license to do its own thing. “You know, we don't really do cask beer, we don’t do stout, we don’t do hazy pales, we’re kind of an outlier in the fact that we just focus on lager.” Of course, any populous area offers businesses the opportunity to carve out their own niche, but it's not lost on Alex either that Bristol is disproportionately populated with creative people and industries, and it’s that impulse to make and create that really drives the city and brewery forward.
He recalls casually bumping into Geoff Barrow of Beak (and Portishead before that), at Lost and Grounded’s taproom one weekend. “He was like ‘oh yeah, we have a recording studio in south Bristol and press vinyl there, but the other thing we do is make Hollywood soundtracks’. I just thought ‘wow’, all these people in all these creative industries really are emanating from here. Even when it comes to festivals — there are lots of festivals in the South West — there are so many people who work in that field based here. You know, they spend months and months working towards this big event and as soon as it’s over go straight into planning next season. It's just nuts, you know? But Bristol is a city that really celebrates that, and celebrates independent businesses.”
PHOTO: Nicci Peet
Alex never draws direct parallels between Bristol’s incredible music, arts and broadcasting scene and the brewery’s focus on festival and arts-based venue sponsorship, but the correlation is evident. In 2024, Lost and Grounded sponsored Desertfest, Waterworks Festival, Bristol Sounds, Bristol Pride, Forwards Festival, Bristol Photography Festival, Massive Attack’s Act 1.5, took over beer supply for the The Old Vic Theatre and The 100 Club in London, and continued to support charities such as Stonewall Housing and The Martin Parr Foundation.
“We love working with festivals, because it means teaming up with passionate and interested people,” says Alex. “While we have the capacity, we want to continue working with amazing events as we are having a lot of fun engaging with people in the setting we want the beer to be enjoyed in.”
As tough as the last two years have been, Lost and Grounded has kept growing. “It feels like we’ve kind of hit our stride,” he says. “We’ve made it to two million litres, so 20,000 hl, and even though it’s been tough, we’ve stuck to our guns, and now with everything starting to stabilize a bit, we’re hoping to just keep moving forward. We're not trying to take over the world by any means, but we do want to make sure we're really solid, you know, because a lot of other businesses are in quite tough situations at the moment.”
PHOTO: Bristol Sounds © Nadine Ballantyne
Part of Lost and Grounded’s growth strategy over the last number of years has been to target London, a city with no shortage of the kinds of accounts the brewery is keen to engage with. The brewery now has three full time members of staff in the capital, with an additional member in Brighton. Where some might see this extension of the brewery’s focus as diluting its attention on Bristol, the reality is, Lost and Grounded’s beer is more a pull than a push, and is just one of the city’s many exports that add to the allure of Bristol.
“There's a new place called the Prospect Building in Bristol,” says Alex. “I think it’s now the biggest venue in the city, and can host 3000 people or something like that. “The people behind it are well respected electronic music promoters from London, and they have invested a lot in the site, and have been getting big name international DJs lined up. We’re the main beer supplier there now as well, which is quite cool, especially given the venue is probably just two kilometers up the road.”
Bristol’s world renowned electronic music scene is just one facet of the city that seems to be curbing the neoliberal trend of sending talent and resources towards capital cities, and instead cultivating industry in its own corner of the world. “It feels like there's a new wave of stuff that's going to start happening here,” says Alex. “There’s big developments happening at the universities, projects like the one behind the Prospect Building. We’re definitely growing because the traffic is shit.”
Perhaps the freedom Alex and Annie felt upon arrival in Bristol is synonymous with that of finding a tribe of like-minded people, all striving for uniqueness in their own way. For the rest of us, that fierce independence and drive to create is magnetic, and it’s only after succumbing to the allure of Bristol, that we’re lucky enough to taste that freedom for ourselves.
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