A Trip Down the Rabbit Hole
Words: Sam Turner • Photography: Mark Newton
This article is taken from:
Hop & Barley — Vol. 08 — Craft Beer Quarterly by Hop & Barley
“I think it was probably Penny Lane at a guess?”
“I said American Psycho …or Red Rum.”
Gaz Matthews and Sue Starling, founders of Mad Hatter Brewery, are debating which was the first beer that they ever made available commercially. They’ve got a packed mental rolodex to flick through before they can settle on one of the many whimsical titles. En route, there’s mention of established favourites like Toxteth IPA and Nightmare On Bold Street; then there are the newer titles like Tzatziki Sour and Easy Imbiber. They are all characters in Mad Hatter’s illustrious story so far. A story which is about to enter a new chapter.
The brewery, set up on a budget of £1,000 and access to Gaz’s parents’ credit card, has been a lesson in DIY ethics, staying true to a vision and not shying away from bold experimentation. I’m joining the two directors (Sue, Managing Director and Gaz, Head Brewer/Director) as they prepare to make the third move of the brewery’s four-year lifespan which will take them to Liverpool’s North Docks area. It’s a move to an altogether more spacious, polished and professional set-up, and a sign of how the brewery has established itself in the industry having grown from very humble beginnings.
“Really, looking back on it none of it should have worked,” Sue tells me from a small office above their third premises situated in the Baltic Triangle (previous homes have been their original base in Toxteth, and a relatively short-lived brewery tap set-up on Jamaica Street, also in the city’s trendy Baltic Triangle). “It was just at the right time really; there wasn’t another brewery in Liverpool, apart from Liverpool Craft, but we’ve always been quite different from them.”
Different is the right word. From the off, Mad Hatter made themselves known as a brewery who were keen to experiment, every beer packed with hops, the odd basil leaf thrown in, and a commitment to brewing with live yeast. “When you start out you’re looking for your USP,” Gaz tells me, referring to the live yeast pledge; “When you really get into home brewing you tend to switch to live yeast, make up starters and cultures. That’s always been a big thing for me because when you’re making Belgian beers, it’s all about the yeast.” On the whole, Gaz and Sue’s home brewing instincts have obviously served them well. Sue admits that the kit they have been using is basically a home brew system, but now it’s time to upscale, for reasons of efficiency and the work life of their dedicated team.
“People’s working lives aren’t very fulfilling here. [Lead Brewer] Angus is brewing twice a day Monday to Thursday (he has Friday off). So it’s about efficiency and making sure things aren’t so labour-intensive,” she tells me as she excitedly lays out the main reasons for moving to the new premises. The new home has a system which allows a twenty-barrel brew in one cycle. This would take five cycles on the current set-up. There’s obviously been a lot of learning on the job for both Sue and Gaz. Gaz learnt brewing techniques inside-out, along with the minutiae science of yeast, time management and all the other disciplines which come with upscaling from home brewing to a demand-heavy commercial brewery. Sue, however, wouldn’t have it any other way. I ask about the two of them having an academic background in philosophy rather than anything remotely business-orientated;
“I don’t know if it’s useful to set up a business and to have a business qualification unless you’re setting it up with a lot of money,” she answers thoughtfully. “I think if you are setting something up with no money it would actually hinder you because you’d look at everything and say ‘well, that won’t work’. But if you have an idea of what you want to project your business as, and what you want your product to be, then that’s how you push it forwards.”
The trajectory of the operation has quickly risen since their home brew beginnings. The constant moving of the brewing operation has partly been in response to the high demand which has met Mad Hatter’s weird and wonderful brews. Sue clearly has mixed feelings about the area they are leaving behind: “It’s been great being here but properties are at a premium in the Baltic Triangle area now. It feels like it could have been something different but it’s gone in a bit of a less interesting way. I think the area we’re moving to is an exciting one. It’s a great premises as well, it’s got lots of interesting things about it.”
Liverpool’s North Docks — branded ‘Ten Streets’ by a council-led scheme to develop it into another flourishing creative hub like the Baltic Triangle — is home to the Invisible Wind Factory, the new venture from the team behind the storied Kazimier Club as well as a clutch of other food, drink and leisure orientated independents. “I want to have a brew tap open there and it would be nice to have events where there are food traders so as to be a bit more interesting than just beer,” Sue tells me when describing their future plans.
The Mad Hatter story is one in which everything seems to have aligned nicely for the company; limitations were turned into strengths, a restless passion for brewing translated into a journey of bold new tastes, and characters coming into the fold who faithfully represented the brewery’s philosophy. From the name and the distinctive aesthetic, through to the vibrant tastes and direction of the constantly rotating roll call of beers. “I think [the hand-drawn bottle designs and logo] goes really well with the beer and the way the brewery has been set up,” says Sue of artist Stealthy Rabbit’s designs. The crudely-drawn rabbit starring in the eyecatching illustrations perfectly encapsulates the lo-fi ethos of the brewery which, early on, translated into unknowable brewing results. Gaz takes up the narrative: “It was never the same each time, Penny Lane was 6.5% to start off with and it was like that for a while, and then it slowly came down. So if we did make the same beer twice, it was probably completely different.”
Sue ponders how economic restraints also fed into the brewing strategy and how these worked out in their favour: “It was a function of not being able to afford to buy the malt and the hops; we’d buy all this stuff, but it wouldn’t work out as we’d change things and you’d just have stuff left over. So it was like ‘right, gotta make a beer and sell it so we can buy more ingredients’.” From here, a combination of the pair’s desire to experiment and push brewing boundaries with the typical financial considerations of a DIY start-up led to beers which caught the attention of a selection of bars in the North West (Port Street Beer House being an early adopter) and word quickly began to spread.
“ If someone had come along and said ‘I want to have a micro brewery, I want to invest half a million pounds in it,’ it would have been a very boring journey ”
If such anecdotes make Mad Hatter come across as haphazard then this would be misrepresentative. It’s clear that Sue and Gaz have always had a clear vision of what they want the brewery to be, informed in part by their philosophical backgrounds. “We did that awful thing left wing people do and use that [Marxist] knowledge and turn it around the other way,” she says coyly. “So, thinking about what a commodity is and thinking about that magical thing that makes somebody want something. We had no budget for marketing obviously, so we thought what can we do differently that other people that are bigger, that have money, can’t do. So you can take risks, you can experiment, so that’s what we did from the start and to really tie in with Mad Hatter as an idea.”
Anyone who has kept tabs on the brewery will have struggled to keep track of the huge variety of beer which has poured from Gaz’s imagination. The result has been a growing range of ales based on a host of traditions and pulled in new directions by tweaking recipes. Sue explains how they have eventually settled on a system to channel their thirst for providing a diverse range: “The first stage was [brewing] all these different beers all the time and then you get to a slightly bigger size and you make sure there is some consistency as well. So we made the decision to have a core range and then occasionals and seasonals.”
A recent addition to the list of occasionals is Bandwagon, an aptly named beer which joins the current trend of producing intentionally cloudy IPAs in the New England style. “It’s always good to be a bit playful with things, to experiment,” Sue tells me. The beer is an example of a modern ironic name meeting with a brew concept to create something which is very Mad Hatter. The brewery has thrived on creating a range which puts a twist on tradition and packages it with a knowing sense of Scouse humour. Sue puts this down to their willingness to take a risk from the beginning: “When we started out, if someone had come along and said ‘I want to have a micro brewery, I want to invest half a million pounds in it,’ it would have been a very boring journey.”
With their madcap selection of beer, the designs which adorn them and the brewery’s short history, there is not much chance of things getting boring at Mad Hatter. The brewery, along with its bar and event space, will make an exciting new neighbour on Liverpool’s Ten Streets and we look forward to hearing how the Mad Hatter story develops.
