In beer we trust

For Farrell’s, this meant improperly packaged beer, which quickly became oxidised and was noticeably faulty by the time it reached drinkers. Once the error had been identified, instead of taking responsibility for the issue, recalling faulty products, disposing of the remaining beer and brewing a new batch, the contract facility sold the labelled, oxidised beer to a distributor, who circulated it to an even wider audience. Farrell said the brand was completely destroyed on Untappd, and it took a long time to shake off the reputation it garnered from that one negative interaction.

“Honestly, to this day — and I say this knowing a lot of people in the industry now — I think it is still the most disastrous contract brew story I've heard or experienced,” says Farrell. Stories like this are the reason many breweries don’t, and won’t, contract brew. Whether a brewery is working on a small kit, and supplementing its volume with beer brewed at a bigger facility, or just has a pilot kit and relies on a contracting partner to brew for the market, handing over your recipe is a big deal. Not only is a brewery entrusting a third party with the reputation of its brand, but also handing over a product the brewer might have spent years developing and tweaking until it’s just right. When trust in that process breaks down, it’s very hard to repair.

Unsurprisingly, when Carl approached Farrell in 2019, ready for a change in the direction of his work and said “hey, you’re always talking about this craft beer thing, why don’t we give it a go?”, they decided the brewery they opened, Stroom, would only sell what it could produce in-house. If slower growth was the cost of ultimate control over the brewing process, then so be it. However, the craft beer landscape of 2019 looked very different to 2024, and as time went on, Stroom became increasingly aware of a crossroads approaching; staying the same wasn’t an option, so the brewery would either have to batten down the hatches, shrink its reach, and commit to small batch brewing, or find economies of scale. Ferrell found himself once again contending with the idea of contract brewing.

“We've now brewed a lot of beer. We've developed our recipes really well, and we just feel like we know what we're looking for, in a way that I didn't back then,” says Farrell. “I think that I was a bit naive. I wasn't even sure what the right questions were to ask, and so this time, we could really find a brewery that reflected our ethos and our values, and that felt like a trustworthy partner, and could really help us scale… That’s what I feel like we found with Frontaal.”

When Farrell talks about asking “the right questions”, and getting an idea of those “intangible values”, he’s talking about, for example, business practices and brewing credentials. “Here at our brewery, we brew with renewable electricity, so one of the things we really loved about Frontaal is that there was somewhere else we could do that at a large scale.” Equally as positive, Farrell says that when Stroom passed the recipe for the beer in question over to Frontaal, there was a lot of back and forth between the teams, discussing the desired output, suggested amendments to the method based on differences in equipment, until each brewery felt confident in what would be produced.

“Anyone who gets enough experience with brewing realises that the recipe and specifications are only half of it,” says Farrell. “Every system is going to be different, and different practices will lead to different outcomes, which is why going over the details is really important. I've learned the hard way that you just really have to be annoying about all of that, and another sign of a good partner is if they're willing to go through all of that with you. It means they get it, they’re taking some responsibility for the beer produced, and they understand that the product is important to you.

“I know there are a lot of breweries out there that you can just send across a recipe and the contract brewery will just execute, and that’s fine, that has a place in the world, but I certainly couldn’t, and wouldn’t do that.”

In some people’s view, the identity of a beer, or brewery, is tied to its terroir, water source, or house yeast, all of which are valid trademarks, but it would be remiss not to consider the brewer’s stylistic choices, tinkering, and end vision for the beer as equally important. Contract brewing has the potential to erase that, as it did in the unfortunate experience Farrell had at the first Belgian brewery he worked at, but it can also platform a brewery’s vision for what beer can be.

The Stroom that distributed hop plants among interested neighbours to plant and grow in their gardens, then brewed a green beer with the hops the community harvested, is the same Stroom that decided to work with Frontaal. The Stroom that has become so beloved for properly dried out and well-bittered beers, is the same Stroom that’s confident in Frontaal’s ability to reproduce this style. The funny thing about contract brewing, is that even though the process begins with establishing trust between collaborating breweries, it ends with the consumer’s trust in the brand they know and love.