Brewery Focus: Luci Clayton-Jones - Double-Barrelled Brewery

Back in September 2019, we went to visit Double-Barrelled’s awesome taproom in Tilehurst, Reading. The place was a work of art and was by far one of the neatest taprooms we’ve ever visited serving up some awesome beery treats including their Summer Sessions Blackcurrent Kettle Sour! A lot’s happened since then so we caught up with Co-founder Luci Clayton-Jones to see how they are adapting to life without the taproom!

How much have things changed since before lockdown?

“We’re alright! When lockdown just started to happen, we didn’t have an online shop, we just sort of imagined we’d go to 0% trade. So having launched our online shop, we’re probably at 50%-normal which we’re pretty chuffed with because we thought that it was going to be a lot worse. We weren't in a profitable position because our whole business plan was to get this site, staggering growth over time. Initially our plans for this year were to take a delivery of new tanks which has been put on hold, not surprisingly. So from our perspective it’s not like we had a whole bunch of profits to go off the back of, but that’s very common in the craft beer sector, it’s not necessarily something that people do with money in mind. The other thing that’s been a massive change has been switching to canning, we’re doing about five times the cans that we were before, which is a big change. It’s also a lot more labour intensive to do it that way, with only two people (myself and Mike). We’ve stripped back the team, which was only a small team but still, they were there for a reason.”

What’s been your biggest challenge?

“I feel like over the last couple of months we’ve been making really critical decisions almost every day. Things like what we’re going to brew next and are we going to package some into keg, what do we spend our time on. Everything’s so much closer to the bone than ever before. I think that has been quite a big mental challenge I suppose. The struggle is that you’re doing this on top of worrying about the global pandemic’s effect on your family, your friends, wondering how are the team coping being on furlough. It’s something which we were quite used to because this time last year for a while it was just Mike and myself. Although this time, it felt tougher I suppose because you’re trying to keep your business alive while there’s much bigger, horrible stuff going on outside in the world.”

What have you learnt?

“I think that we’ve learnt a lot and that one of the strengths that comes from this is as a small business your adaptability is a strength. I think that going back to the two of us has been a positive thing, it’s helped us get our heads into some of the areas that we’d moved away from. It’s been a huge learning curve and what I’d like to see, if we get through the other side of this is to look back and go, ‘We’re better brewery owners then we were before.’”

Can you share any of your future plans for after lockdown?

“What we want to do is do our best to come out of this in as strong a position as possible, so we can crack on with the new fermenters which will mean new team members! So just getting us into a position where that’s what happens and try and look at this period of time and not be forever impacted by it. It’s one of the challenges financially but we’re quite determined to push through it and get through the other side and keep on progressing.”

What will be the first pub that you hit up after lockdown and what will you be drinking?

“It’s got to be The Fox and Hounds in Caversham. It’s our local pub to home and it’s a great pub, great beer and it will have to be a pint of their properly kept cask and whatever takes a fancy that day!”Sounds like a great place to start Luci, cheers for chatting to us and we’ll hopefully be catching you for a beer in the Double Barrelled taproom soon!