Is working in a brewery your dream job? We made CHARLES BOOTH’s day and sent him to help out at the Tiny Rebel Brewery, Newport.

WHEN I was sent to do work experience at a brewery, I was the envy of most of the male staff in the office – as to many it is a dream job.

I started work at the Tiny Rebel microbrewery in Newport, which has only been going since February this year, but is fast getting a good reputation for producing top quality beers.

I went along not really knowing a great deal about the process of brewing.

I knew it involved yeast at some stage but beyond that I would have been struggling to explain any further.

Of course I have drunk a few pints in my time – but making it was a mystery to me.

I arrived at just after 8am to begin my induction and to learn what turned out to be a complicated process of finding the right ingredients and then making the correct blend.

I was working with Gareth Williams to begin with. He explained how the beer went from raw material to liquid form. I didn’t know until that point that it would take a month before the beer was ready to be sold to customers.

And because there are only two people working full-time on the business, it is very labour intensive.

There are no big machines that do everything at the touch of a button here – it takes a lot of effort to get the right results.

Every part of the process is given the care and attention needed to make that brew as close to perfect as possible. Nothing is left to chance.

I can see why Tiny Rebel is an up and coming brewery because Gareth and co-founder Bradley Cummings clearly love what they do and it shows in their product.

I, on the other hand, am used to writing for a living, and I was worried my input into their painstaking preparation would set them back.

I got stuck in and helped mixing the malt which was then sucked into a vat known as a mash tun, which was filled with hot water and then mixed to make it even.

That is then left for about an hour and the wort (the liquid) is then piped into a copper vat where it is boiled and the hops are added.

At this point there is still plenty to do – Gareth told me the brewing of the beer was only 30 per cent of the work, and 70 per cent was cleaning.

That didn’t sound as exciting as the brewing but as Gareth explained, if there is a batch of beer which doesn’t taste right then it could ruin Tiny Rebel’s reputation. Even the smallest valve or pipe needs to be spotless so everything runs smoothly.

It was then time to put some beer into barrels while the mixture was boiled and then cooled.

It would then be piped into another vat where the yeast was added and the fermenting began.

The beer we poured had been fermenting for more than a week and was ready to be barrelled up so it could be conditioned and then ready for sale after another week.

It may sound an easy process, but the art of brewing is getting the blend right so that seasoned drinkers want to keep coming back for more and if the process goes wrong at any stage the beer is nor fit to sell.

After piping the beer into barrels there was the barrel rolling and stacking. There was no machinery here to help with the load.

I was coming to the end of my experience and I can safely say that to be a good brewer takes dedication and lots of elbow grease. But that is not even half the story.

It took two years of research and home brewing to get the right taste before Gareth Williams and Bradley Cummings could even think about doing it full time.

I learned a lot about brewing but only scratched the surface of Gareth and Bradley’s knowledge.

Brewing ‘was a hobby which turned into a job’

GARETH, 31, and Bradley 24, are both passionate about brewing.

Bradley said: “I don’t say that I’m going to work I say I’m going down the brewery.

“It’s just don’t think it’s like I’m working it’s was a hobby which has turned into a job.

“When we were testing out different brews we started in my dad’s garage with a 50 litre brewing system and I would say we did about 100 brews in two years until we got the taste we wanted.

“We both read lots of books and researched the brewing process as much as we could before we tried to start up.

“We have tried to use local manufacturers.

We use packaging from Dean Packaging in Cwmbran and LPS Labels in Blackwood.”

Factfile

TINY Rebel was set up in February 2012 by brothers- in-law Gareth Williams and Bradley Cummings.

They have both been interested in home brewing but tried a few of their beers out on some impartial drinkers who liked their beer.

After two years of research and refining their beers they took the plunge and set up fulltime on Maesglas Industrial Estate.

Both worked for Whitehead Building Services in Newport.

Gareth was an electrical engineer and Bradley was a mechanical engineer.

They own a pub in Abercynon called The Navigation House, which stocks their beers and hope to have more in the future.

Their beers include Fubar, Urban IPA, Doc Brown and Hadouken.

For more information go to tinyrebel.co.uk