Hosted by our London Contributor, Matthew Curtis—For my first episode, I invited one of my best friends in the UK beer industry up to my apartment, here in North London, to record an interview. These days, Chris Hall works for a cool little brewery in South London called Brew By Numbers as their sales and media guy. I’ll be bringing the full story of Brew by Numbers to GBH soon, but before then I wanted to talk to Chris about how he worked his way into the beer industry
His job encompasses everything from running the brewery’s Twitter account to writing artful blog posts about forthcoming beer releases as well as developing and hosting events. On top of this he’ll often be out visiting accounts and selling beer, and on really busy days you might even see him on the back of a forklift truck moving pallets around the warehouse. Such is the way of a small business.
But Chris’ journey into the brewing industry was an unconventional one. Like me, he started out as a beer blogger, which is how we met and became friends. From there he became a professional beer writer, which eventually led to his position at Brew By Numbers. This is something we’re seeing more and more of in the beer industry, people starting out as enthusiasts who are eventually turning pro. And like Chris, they’re not just succeeding—they're thriving.