New Scottish Brewery – Lawman Brew Co

Posted by on Dec 4, 2014 in Scottish Beer | 4 Comments

rb2HEqI3“If you can’t brew on this scale, you really shouldn’t be brewing on a bigger plant, to be honest,” says Craig Laurie, when I ask him if the modern trend towards nano-brewing is an easier way for prospective brewers to get their beers out than the (previously traditional) contract brewing route. Craig is just about to launch Lawman Brew Co, based out of a corner of his flat in Cumbernauld. “There’s absolutely bugger all competition there,” he continues, “our local station is Croy, and it seems to be perfect if you want to start a microbrewery to attract visitors; you’re on the central line between Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling. If you’re within walking distance of the station, you’re sorted.”

A bespoke brewery for visitors is the long-term aim – he’s not going to be showing people around his flat anytime soon – but the area of his living/dining room set aside (“the benefits of having a very understanding wife,”) is the first stage in that progression. He’s fully registered with the Council and HMRC, and is pretty much ready to go, pending a few tweaks in recipes. I ask him what his limiting factors are. “For me at the moment, time and capacity,” he replies. “The kit is small. Ridiculously small. I can do seventy litre batches, but I made my own hybrid yeast strain, it floccs out really well and ferments out in about four days so I can turn around ales pretty quickly.”

“I’m ready to go, basically,” he continues. “I’ve not been entirely happy with some of the batches, but I feel morally bad to release something I’m not happy with – the scale I’m doing it on, the whole purpose is to try and build up good will.” This is the immediate aim of what Craig is doing – and what others, like Edinburgh’s Carbon Smith Brewing, are also doing. Maintaining your day job, whilst effectively selling licensed homebrew (in terms of scale, not quality). Doing that gets your name out there, builds up a brand, and when you can get enough money together – by other means if not sales – you scale up.

Craig has an advantage in that regard – the day job that he will be maintaining is assistant head brewer at Williams Bros. He fully intends to head out on his own, however (“I’ve been pretty honest with Scott [Williams] for a long while that I was going to have an exit strategy along these lines,”) – but when he does so, the next stage will be to contract brew at the Williams-owned Drygate facility in Glasgow. “It’s always been a really structured idea – do the glorified home-brew [as he jokingly refers to it] for a while, get people wanting to buy the beer, then scale it up to five, ten barrels – if I can sell that, just do that a few times and become self-sustainable, then put the money back into the business.”

“The whole point of doing the Lawman Brew Co thing is because I want creative control of what I’m doing,” he states. And the name Lawman? “It’s been a recurring joke for the last few years; my degree’s in law – I graduated from Aberdeen about six years ago. Every job I’ve ever had since, I’ve not mentioned the fact that I’ve got a law degree – including my current one. It wasn’t until my review when I sat down with Scott and he said ’you know you have a law degree, right?’ I said ‘yeah, but I want to work here!’ So I just don’t mention it anymore, the name is kind of my way of acknowledging that I do actually have it, but making it a joke [at the same time].”

Craig is releasing a lineup of four beers – Steadfast, a 4.4% elderflower kölsch, based on a recipe for his brother’s holiday-inspired wedding beer; Horizon APA (5.0%), an American pale ale; Weatherall, a 6.5% US IPA hopped with Jester hops from Stocks Farm in Worcester; and a 7.1% 1860 export stout called Obsidian. “I only brewed 140 litres of it,” he says. “The malt bill is huge, it goes through the roof.” Interestingly, that beer will be cask-only, the two pales keg/cask and the kölsch key-keg only. I ask Craig why he’s not releasing any bottles. “One bad bottle and it’s all gone,” he replies. “I’m happy to take the cask route with bars I trust, but in my experience with home brewing, so much can go wrong with bottles.”

Craig hopes to get his beers into the market before Christmas. And speaking of casks, he has bought a few from Williams Bros, and is using them to drive forward his new business, to act as a motivational force. “The only goal I’ve set in stone is the next CAMRA Scottish Real Ale Festival,” he finishes. “I want to have a cask at it – I’ve been saying that for donkey’s, so in 2015 I’m going to have a cask at it, come hell or high-water.”



Lawman Brew Co, Cumbernauld
Twitter Feed, Official Website (still under construction).

4 Comments

  1. Ben
    December 4, 2014

    “effectively selling licensed homebrew (in terms of scale, not quality). ”

    Are you saying that homebrew is of a lower quality than commercially made beer? It’s an interesting point and my gut instinct would be to argue but then maybe I’m just lucky enough to have tried a lot of very well made homebrew and unfortunate enough to have tried a lot of very poorly made commercially brewed beer. Generally speaking though you’re probably right, on the whole. You should come along to Brewstore’s homebrew club some time, I think you’d be surprised. Someone brought a dipa recently that could easily give pliny and all those other fancy ones a run for their money and there’s a chap brewing sours on the same level as some of the best Belgian beer I’ve ever had. Beer making analogies can often be brought back to bread and cake making, would you make a generalised statement that store bought bread or cake is of better quality than home made? It depends on the store and the at-home baker. I’ve spraffed on way too much for a blog comment. All the best to Craig, I look forward to trying the beer.

  2. Pac-Man
    December 5, 2014

    Nice one Ben 😉

    Always good to big up Ewan and Daniel as well :P. Good call on coming to the brew club though Rich, it’s always good times, and in all honesty some of the worst beers at it have been commercial.

    In other news, on yerself Craig! Give me a shout when it goes on somewhere…mostly cloisters….

  3. Theo
    December 5, 2014

    Not to forget some of the most accomplished imperial stout’s anyone will ever try…Ben you humble man!

  4. Craig
    December 5, 2014

    It’s a very fair point, I do hope nobody thinks I’m disparaging homebrewers! I agree that there are some world class brewers in waiting at the Brewstore meets (the one time I attended, there was an Earl Grey IPA that was beyond brilliant. If you’re the brewer, please get in touch with me!) Badly made beer is badly made beer, the final volume produced is irrelevant. You just look sillier if you produce 100HL of watery pish.

    The “glorified homebrew” quip is really just to get across the scale of what I’m doing just now, and my logic that while I iron out my catalogue, it’s easier to dump a batch I’m not happy with now, as opposed to later down the line.

    Regarding stockists, I’ll be doing a proper grown up launch event at Cloisters (yay!) in a fortnight (yeast permitting). I’ll be very vocal about it on the intertubes when it’s finalised. Thanks for the kind words!

Leave a Reply

*