I’m standing knee-high in a damp field, stalks swaying as though part of an eager choir. Young shoots are tender underfoot. Waves of thick fog roll over the land like a parade of winter’s ghosts, lost in time at the end of June. Lush, green barley runs up and down slopes like a river from a weir, met in places with thick brushstrokes of the gold of a recent harvest. This vaguely eerie patchwork stretches all the way up the hills, but we’re only here to see a small section.
We—myself, two brewers, a miller and grain breeder, a farmer, a dog, and a tractor—are a few miles south of the postcard town of Lewes, close to England’s South Coast, somewhere past Monk’s House, Virginia Woolf’s old cottage. Soon after I arrived at Beak Brewery, on the town’s outskirts, the two brewers and I piled into a car to visit the brewery’s grain project. And here we now stand, brushing the tops of the crop with our fingers among chattering skylarks and with mist about our flushed cheeks.
“Obviously, normally all the different grain varieties are grown in separate monoculture fields,” explains Danny Tapper, Beak’s founder. “What we’ve done is: Everything has been grown together, and [will be] harvested together and malted together. Whatever the blend is, that will dictate what that beer is.”
What’s whipping about our shins and is shaken by the wind as we speak is a mix of barley, wheat, and rye. Another patch on this agricultural quilt is a mix of heritage grains. Some of this is destined for Beak’s young mixed-fermentation program. Some will become clean Saison.
“I contacted a whole bunch of ancient grain growers and the name John Letts kept coming up,” explains Robin Head-Fourman, Beak’s head brewer. “I got in contact and explained what we wanted to do; he said he could grow a mix and it kind of went from there. It started as us wanting to grow some local grain, but not quite as ambitious as it’s turned out to be. John’s enthusiasm for this kind of agriculture is something we wanted to be on board with.”
Letts grows heritage grains, which keep threads of agricultural history alive. The practice also has environmental benefits in comparison to monocultural mass agriculture—growing different plant species together promotes biodiversity and soil health. But aside from these practical considerations, producing their own malt like this just seems to be a naturally Beak way to go about it.
“It’s about producing beers with a sense of place, so the more we can source locally, the better,” says Tapper. “It’s funny, because in terms of flavor you’re not going to be able to taste it and say, ‘This beer is from Sussex.’ But the whole point of mixed-fermentation beers is the process—the process is as important as the final drink. Doing things like this, and going the extra mile, is a story. We can tell the story of local ingredients and producers.”
Years before, when he was traveling in the U.S., Tapper noticed something from back home that gave him pause. “The breweries there have sacks from British maltsters, and you can buy the sacks that have been turned into handbags and stuff. This is so prized around the world; people talk about hops but people don’t talk about grain. But it’s grown on our doorstep.”
East Sussex is a land of undulation. The county is one of peaks and troughs, the rolling hills like verdant waves paused mid-formation, breaking into brilliant chalk cliffs. Of these sudden seams of white against the fields’ green agate, one descends into Lewes, a few miles from the pebbled beaches of the seaside.
Beak Brewery sits just between that sheer cliff face—which, according to Tapper, is frequented by peregrine falcons—and the River Ouse, where a seal once hung out with some sheep. Against this extraordinary scenery is the mundane industrial estate the brewery has occupied since early 2020. The block of warehouses is becoming a destination: a coffee roaster and a florist opened up next door, and there’s rumor of other food and drink businesses moving in. On my first visit, tables were wheeled outside, the pleasant burble of a filling taproom echoing off the cliff above.
Lewes is a town of antiques shops, historical monuments, some truly lovely pubs, and particularly English, and frankly batshit, traditions. The area’s Bonfire Night celebrations are the most extravagant in the country, involving burning effigies, torchlit processions through the streets, and burning barrels of pitch that are hurled into the river. The World Pea Throwing Championships are held at the Lewes Arms each summer, along with spaniel racing and something called dwile flonking. Lewes also has a storied beer history; much of the town’s wealth in the 19th century came from brewing. “At the end of the 19th century there were 7 breweries in Lewes and 70 pubs, now it’s just Harvey’s Brewery and about 20 to 30 pubs,” writes Rob Stephenson in a blog post from 2013.
Though in times past the small town had numerous breweries and malthouses—Southdown Brewery, Beard & Co., Harvey’s, Verrall & Sons, Ballard & Co., the Bear Yard Brewery, Cliffe Brewery and Maltings, the Castle Brewery, Star Brewery, South Malling Steam Brewery, and various brewery-owned and -run maltings—by the turn of the 20th century, only Harvey’s remained. In 2016, Abyss Brewing started up in the cellar beneath the Pelham Arms in the town center. Some four years later, Beak opened its doors.
Danny Tapper’s path to opening a brewery feels consistent with the craft beer industry at large: An interest in beer led him to begin homebrewing, which in turn led him to open Beak. It’s just that it took him longer than usual to get there.
“I worked as a food journalist for around a decade and got to interview a lot of incredible food producers over this period,” he says. “This inspired me to start making my own food, and beer was the obvious [subsequent] choice as I’d been a big Real Ale fan throughout my teens.”
At this point still living in his native Leeds in Yorkshire, Tapper threw himself into homebrewing, traveling to London to volunteer at The Kernel under founder Evin O’Riordain’s watchful eye—“God bless that man,” he says—before investing in a 100-liter kit and selling beer to local bottle shops.
“Danny’s an exceptionally patient guy, with plenty of caution thrown in. I can’t think of another brewer who waited so long to go from cuckoo to full commercial. But as a result he experienced the rapidly growing Leeds beer scene, watched and learned from multiple brewers, built up plenty of connections and friends, and of course fine-tuned his Parade recipe amongst others along the way.”
“I’ve just checked our Untappd profile and the first check-in was 2016,” he recalls. “We started getting some good reviews and more demand so I approached North Brewing Co. to see if I could cuckoo brew with them and, amazingly, they said yes. After that, I started brewing nomadically all over the place including Northern Monk in Leeds, Brass Castle near York, and Partizan and Villages in London.”
It would take Tapper years to make the move from homebrewing and subsequently cuckoo brewing to opening a brick-and-mortar brewery, but as with so many things that have come to characterize his young business, it was all about the process.
“Danny’s an exceptionally patient guy, with plenty of caution thrown in,” says Northern Monk Brewing Co.’s co-founder and production director Brian Dickson. “I can’t think of another brewer who waited so long to go from cuckoo to full commercial. But as a result he experienced the rapidly growing Leeds beer scene, watched and learned from multiple brewers, built up plenty of connections and friends, and of course fine-tuned his Parade recipe amongst others along the way.”
Parade, Beak’s “house” IPA, is the closest thing the brewery has to a flagship. A soft, juicy, and aromatic IPA—I found myself describing it as a “transcendental drinking experience” after ordering it at a pub recently—the beer is also one that Tapper has continued to hone since those early days.
“I used to brew some pretty odd beers with weird flavor combinations, which were very difficult to sell,” he says. “I remember brewing a juniper and lapsang souchong Red Ale in summer and kegs were still hanging around a year later. Obviously, I couldn’t continue on this trajectory or none of us would have jobs. As such, the majority of our output is now pale and hoppy, which is what we love to drink. But our ethos has stayed the same; our motto is ‘Life-Affirming Ales.’ For me this means a focus on making beers that spark conversations and unforgettable sensory experiences.”
“Parade is one constant,” says Dickson. “It’s a bit hazier, juicier, as is the popular style, but there’s always been a crisper, cleaner character to it which they’ve maintained. I think if you could try what he was making then and now, side by side, there’d be a clear similarity between the beers. Everything he made cuckoo was consistently good and that’s also continued, the consistency they achieve and the high standards they hit from day one down in Lewes is hugely impressive whilst also not a surprise whatsoever.”
“Life-Affirming Ales” may sound trite at first, but it’s something Tapper truly believes in. He’s received a little criticism on social media for the slogan, with one user claiming that helping homeless people, or working for the U.K.’s National Health Service, is life-affirming, craft beer less so. But why can’t food and drink—with culture, conviviality, and community at their heart—be life-affirming?
“It’s about flavor experiences, cultural experiences, and sitting down together and enjoying something,” says Tapper. “And talking about processes and provenance: It’s not just about the beer. We’re trying to make people excited again. I remember having my first Kernel, and feeling that life-affirming moment where you realize what beer can be.”
“Cooking is what makes humans human, right?” adds Head-Fourman. “And sharing alcohol and sharing experiences has been a common factor in human experiences since humans were humans. So how is that not life-affirming?”
Beak’s output now, some distance from Tapper’s slow-moving forays into experimental brewing, does indeed spark joy. That joy also comes through in Beak’s branding, which is stylistically naïve and playful—all primary colors and illustrations that would be at home in a children’s book—and evokes whimsy in a way no other brewery’s labels quite do. (When Tapper asked illustrator Jay Cover, a school friend from back home, to create Beak’s visual identity, he asked for something that didn’t look like a brewery.)
An oversimplification would be to say that Beak is a contemporary British brewery that has inherited ideas from modern U.S. brewing, and that performs at a high level: It brews beers that are on-trend and executes them well. Were it not for a handful of other influences, approaches, and considerations, that’s where it might remain—consistent if perhaps unremarkable. But that description doesn’t do the brewery justice.
“It’s about flavor experiences, cultural experiences, and sitting down together and enjoying something. And talking about processes and provenance: It’s not just about the beer. We’re trying to make people excited again. I remember having my first Kernel, and feeling that life-affirming moment where you realize what beer can be.”
“We keep coming back to the word ‘playful’: playful and approachable, not overly macho, bright, clean, a nod to tradition,” says Tapper.
“In terms of how I approach brewing our beer, it’s certainly affected by the branding,” explains Head-Fourman. “It goes hand in hand. It’s not entirely a conscious thing: I’m not sure I can articulate it in any kind of coherent way but if the brand were different the beers would be different, definitely. Definitely.”
For all that Beak is resolutely light-hearted and bright, it is also refined, operating with a deftness of touch and restraint. “I certainly want the beers to have a certain sense of clarity of flavor—we were talking about recipe development and quite often with a beer I’ll limit myself to two to four hops,” Head-Fourman continues. “I just think it’s very easy to have something that’s a bit brash and a bit too bold and macho in its flavor expression.”
Bringing expertise from his time at Burning Sky Brewery (located just a few miles away, in the neighboring village of Firle), including a knowledge of mixed-fermentation brewing, Head-Fourman’s ethos is evidently influenced by his time there. Burning Sky is a brewery that nods to tradition but is free of its often rigid grasp. If I could choose one brewery that exercises restraint in a playful manner, while producing balanced, complex, and nuanced beer, I’d argue it would be Burning Sky. If I could choose a second, I’d pick Beak.
“I’d say obviously [I brought] the knowledge of how to do mixed-fermentation stuff, but also just a commitment to doing things right and to a high quality, and being a stickler for details,” Head-Fourman says. As in his role at Burning Sky, his focus at Beak remains on those details, rather than inherited ideas of precedent or tradition.
“If you stuck to tradition, we wouldn’t have New England IPA. Somewhere along the line someone somewhere has got to go, ‘Nah that’s wrong, let’s do this.’ Someone’s got to put their neck out and say, ‘Do it this way, it’s a bit weird.’”
“We got the keys for this building two weeks before lockdown,” says Tapper.
We—me, Tapper, Head-Fourman, and head of operations and sales Kat Turkova—are sitting around the table in the taproom that doubles as the brewery’s office. Naturally quiet and thoughtful, Tapper’s more given to consideration than exuberance, but he says this with the wry humor that only some distance from stress can impart. Everything was ready to go, and then COVID-19 struck.
“Robin handed in his notice, I obviously quit my job and got all the investment in,” Tapper says. “I was like, ‘Fuck, we’re screwed. We’re just obviously not going to open.’ In the end we didn’t really have any option but to continue, and just start brewing and see what happened.”
What happened, to the team’s surprise, was that everything they brewed sold quickly. Online sales across the industry soared while everyone was sequestered indoors; Beak’s webstore serendipitously launched during the same period. It didn’t take long for the relief to set in. “That was in August,” explains Head-Fourman. “That summer we thought everything was going to be OK.”
The taproom’s opening weekend was similar: The team’s low expectations were surpassed immeasurably, and quickly. “The original business plan was based on three or four people sat around the bar—i.e. me, Kat, and Robin—having a beer and just chatting,” says Tapper. “I saw it like ‘Cheers,’ four or five people coming in; it doesn’t matter. And then the first weekend? 300, 400 people came down.”
Like so many beer businesses, Beak pivoted; it moved retail operations online; it offered curbside pickup. But to open a brewery as the pandemic unfolded was not only a more complex and likely more confusing challenge than established breweries faced, but it’s one that left an indelible mark on the young business.
“I certainly want the beers to have a certain sense of clarity of flavor—we were talking about recipe development and quite often with a beer I’ll limit myself to two to four hops. I just think it’s very easy to have something that’s a bit brash and a bit too bold and macho in its flavor expression.”
“I think it was a blessing for us, lockdown,” says Tapper. “It sounds awful, but in a purely business sense: The whole industry was flat, and a lot of the more established breweries really struggled to maintain wages, rent. A lot were reliant on selling to pubs, but we weren’t reliant on anything.”
Beak was, in many ways, born of lockdown; those harrowing months in 2020 and 2021 shaped the company the team grew into. “I also think it leveled the playing field a little bit,” Tapper continues. “If you could shout on social media and people were inspired by what you were doing, it was a great moment for upstart breweries to get their voice out there.”
That period’s closure of pubs and radical shifts within the market also defined Beak’s output in a different way: “When we were originally talking about the brewery, we were talking about cask,” says Head-Fourman. “We were like, ‘We’ll have a cask offering,’ and we were also like, ‘We’ll brew Lulla,’ which is a great 3.5% beer, but it’s a pub beer—it’s a beer for pints. We barely brewed any of that, and only now that pubs are open again are we brewing that on draft. Over winter 2020 we were brewing big, hoppy, 6, 7, 8% beers, and to give people that excitement when there wasn’t any other excitement going on in people’s lives. In that sense it really shaped what we brewed and what we’re known for.”
“Beak’s arrival on the local scene, both in Lewes and East Sussex in general, has been undeniably impactful,” says Jaye Arbuckle, Lewes resident and brewer at nearby Brighton Bier. “To some Lewes might seem mostly unchanged, but I certainly get the sense that some more of the cobwebs have been knocked loose and the work started in recent years by the likes of the Snowdrop Inn, Pelham Arms, and the Patch Cafe to provide Lewes with a wider—and dare I say less resolutely amber and brown—beer selection has certainly been bolstered.”
Although this hilly corner of East Sussex has not historically wanted for beer—with Harvey’s a steadfast mainstay in Lewes itself, Brighton’s increasingly vibrant beer scene just a few miles southwest, and breweries such as Abyss and Burning Sky in the area—Beak’s arrival appears to have been met with great approval.
Lewes is a town that values independence and supports local businesses. “The high street in Lewes does not look like a lot of other towns of this size,” says Tapper. “There’s a big ethos of supporting local in Lewes, so that backing has come to us, which is great.” It doesn’t take long to find a can of Parade or Lulla, with their immediately recognizable labels, in any given shop or bar in town. As well as providing a new audience with a supply of contemporary hoppy beer, part of Beak’s success lies in possibly the biggest novelty it brought to the town: its taproom.
“I think people ’round here had been waiting for something that wasn’t a pub,” Tapper says. “We’re blessed here to have beautiful, traditional pubs which are an absolute pleasure to be in, but while pubs may feel welcoming to us they might not to everyone in the town, and I think opening this space has given people in Lewes somewhere to go that isn’t as exclusive as a pub.”
“I expected it would be popular with younger generations,” adds Turkova, “but actually I’d say it’s equal with older people too.”
Though we’re now a couple years past the taproom’s opening weekend, and the team are no longer surprised by the number of customers coming through the door, I still witness an excitement among the crowd each time I visit. It’s not hard to see why: As well as Beak’s own offerings and a handful of guest beers, there are delicious natural wines and ciders on offer. Each weekend sees different food businesses take up residence on the pavement outside the taproom under that looming chalk cliff: vegan Mexican; American-style BBQ; Middle Eastern; open-flame cooking; East African-Gujarati fusion cuisine. What are essentially food trucks outside a brewery is nothing new, but given the breadth of options on offer each week paired with varied and interesting beer, it’s easy to see why locals keep returning.
“Having food as a central part of that experience is really important,” says Tapper. “Vegan Mexican food—how many times has vegan Mexican food been served in Lewes over the last 150 years?”
“With Lewes being a Harvey’s town, it’s very easy to say, ‘I’m a Harvey’s drinker,’ but is that through a die-hard love of Harvey’s or is that just a case of proximity?” asks Head-Fourman. “It’s nice to offer someone something different—and I think people have been really open-minded in Lewes. You see it at the taproom: We get such a vast array of Lewes coming down, from young people to retired people, people with young kids come down. It’s great.”
Two years after opening, Beak held its first beer festival. Not content with throwing a party like any other, the brewery hosted These Hills in a field a half hour’s walk from the town center, comprising a handful of stretch tents, some seating—both hay bales and ubiquitous trestle tables and benches—and 40 or so breweries. Some of the U.K.’s best were in attendance, including a good many of Beak’s earliest brewery friends, but also Belgium’s Gueuzerie Tilquin, Denmark’s Kølster, and Latvia’s Ārpus Brewing Co., as well as Forest and Main Brewing Company, Saint Errant Brewing, Speciation Artisan Ales, and Transient Artisan Ales from the U.S. Range Brewing and Wildflower Brewing & Blending even flew over from Australia for the event.
[Disclosure: The author’s brewery, Queer Brewing, also poured at These Hills.]
“I feel that we were welcomed into the industry with open arms and the reception has been incredible since the beginning,” explains Turkova, who was central in the event planning. “The support we have received not only from customers but also from breweries and retailers has been overwhelming, and that has only grown in the last year. The festival was a crazy idea we had, and I think it showcases who we are as a brewery and a team—ambitious and passionate about what we do and the industry. The fact that all these amazing breweries not only from the U.K. but also from abroad took a chance on us and wanted to be a part of These Hills means so much, and I personally believe that the festival was a milestone for us, a transition from a newcomer to a solidified position within the industry.”
Tapper, Head-Fourman, Turkova, and the rest of the growing team are some distance from where they started. Beak has come a long way since Tapper’s nomadic brew days, since the brewery’s business plan centered around a few people drinking pints at the bar. The brewery’s trajectory seems steep, but never runaway.
I still remember standing by the open fire in the industrial estate’s courtyard during my first visit, watching the shadow creep up the cliff as the sun set, wobbling its way over the jagged, crenelated chalk. I watched locals in the taproom, where an enormous foeder now stands. Since then, that taproom space has shrunk as the brewery has swollen, and engulfed most of the building. It’s clear this is not just a growing brewery, but one in perpetual motion.
“It still feels like a dream to think only a year ago the brewery was half-empty and now we have barely anywhere to stand,” says Turkova. “We’ve definitely learned a lot and we had to learn fast, having to adapt to the changes happening within the brewing and hospitality industry. I think we have become more well-rounded and adventurous in terms of the styles of beers we have produced in the last year, whilst constantly trying to improve the IPAs which we are most known for. We have some very talented people who joined the brewery and it’s been exciting to see the team grow and care so much about what we are trying to achieve.”
It’s interesting to see how Beak has adapted and shifted course over the last 18 months or so, including reassessing both where its strengths currently lie and where its energy is best spent. One recent change has been the plans for its heritage grains project—as grower John Letts has taken some time away from work, so too have the brewery’s mixed-fermentation ambitions. But that doesn’t mean Beak’s agricultural involvement has ended.
“I’ve always been of the opinion that when we do something we should do it with the dedication and respect it deserves, and if we’re being realistic with ourselves, in our current space we can’t give it the space and respect, and time, that it deserves,” says Head-Fourman. “We’re in a very tight space, we’re all on top of each other, we need more storage space. For me it’s like: We need to put staff first and make the working environment better rather than saying, ‘We have to have this foeder to do this.’”
“It still feels like a dream to think only a year ago the brewery was half-empty and now we have barely anywhere to stand. We’ve definitely learned a lot and we had to learn fast, having to adapt to the changes happening within the brewing and hospitality industry. I think we have become more well-rounded and adventurous in terms of the styles of beers we have produced in the last year, whilst constantly trying to improve the IPAs which we are most known for.”
As well as in the paused mixed-fermentation project—though the base Saison I taste from the soon-to-be-departed foeder is excellent, as is Cedric, Beak’s first beer brewed with its speciality malt—the swaying, patchwork field has come to fruition elsewhere. Bampa, Beak’s beloved Best Bitter, is testament to a change of heart. When I first sat down with Tapper and Head-Fourman nearly two years ago, I was told there was no point trying to do something that’s already done very well. “When we were starting up like, ‘Yeah we’ll release Hazy IPAs and we’ll do Best on cask,’” Head-Fourman told me in June 2021, “and then we realized it’s already being done in Lewes very well, and there’s no point trying to do that.”
A couple of months ago, Beak released its second-annual edition of the beer. It’s an exemplary Best Bitter: a little nutty, earthy and herbal in the hop profile and biscuity and warm in the malt, wrapped up in a gorgeous, creamy head. It does seem to be more than just a beer to Beak, especially given how ardently I was once told it would never happen.
“Bampa is like the first love you will never be able to completely forget,” laughs Turkova. “Once it’s gone we think and talk about it all year until it next comes around. For us it’s a real statement of respect we have for the local area and tradition.”
“My desert island or death row beer would be a pint of cask Yorkshire Best Bitter served through a sparkler,” adds Tapper. “I don’t think there’s another beer style on earth that can match it in terms of flavor, balance, depth, complexity, history, or sense of place. It incorporates heritage varieties of rye, wheat, and barley and imparts a subtle acidity, which complements the bready, biscuity flavors of our Maris Otter base malt. Bampa is our ode to this style and a statement of intent, in terms of showing the beer community that we’re about much more than just juicy IPAs.”
Words + PhotosLily Waite
