12th July 2024
For the July issue of Tunbridge Wells Business Magazine we speak to Charlie Young, Futures Development Director at Allkin Tap & Bottle, who thank members for supporting local with 10% off drinks at the tap room. Read our feature page here, or for our full interview read on...
Charlie, you spent four years building up Good Things Brewing Co. and what you achieved, particularly during a pandemic, was remarkable.
GTB is a time that we all look back on very fondly. We became the most sustainable brewery in the UK creating 90KW of energy daily, boring our own water on-sure, re-using our waste products & delivering in our electric van. We made more energy per year than we consumed.
Only 11 months of Good Things trading were outside COVID. We were very lucky as just prior to lockdown we had a canning line installed on site. If we had not had that it would have been a very difficult time and we may not have made it out the other side.
By having the canning line, it meant that we could pivot the company very quickly from trade heavy to direct to consumer. We created an online shop where all of our customers could still enjoy some of our delicious beers in the comfort of their own homes. During that time, we sold over a 250,000 cans & just under 50,000 pints.
Allkin is a special name. Remind me what it stands for and how your new brand came about.
When lightning struck our brewery in July 2021 we were overwhelmed by the support from our community. Our GoFundme raised over £20,000 in 2 days and they gave us the strength to carry on. This same community went on to help us raise over £450,000 within 6 months of launching Allkin.
This, on top of the support we received throughout COVID, meant that we had to come back as a more community focused company and therefore appropriately named brew house.
Our name is an important part of our journey, one that represents our community, who we are and where we are going.
All - Kin, Al community, All friends, All of us.
How would you describe Allkin beer?
Allkin beer is still in its infancy and we have a brand new brew team - Sam, our Head Brewer, and Ethan, our Brewer / Sustainable Production Lead. We are very lucky to have these two amazing humans who’ve come from one of the leading breweries in the country.
So far, they have been involved in 2/3 of the beers that Allkin have released - ‘Flip the Bird’ a 4% pale that was fresh & zesty with a slight bitterness on the finish. ‘Sabbatical’ - a 6.5% IPA which was an amped up version with a few more hop varieties giving it a dank, tropical character. Not quite as session-able as the former.
Since February we have not had any Allkin beers available, a choice we made as we like to look after our production from end to end to guarantee a great product. However, a month ago we were very fortunate as our good friends Brewing Brothers in Hastings have now allowed us to install our own Fermentation vessel on their site whilst we wait for our brew kit to be installed in Eridge. This means that our brewers get to get back to doing what they love, and we get to supply our tap room with new and exciting Allkin Beers very very soon.
For now, we are going to be producing pales and IPAs as they are our best sellers at the tap room. Once we have the brewery running, we aim to have 12 lines of beer filled with Allkin beers. This means that we will be producing a wide variety of beers, from lagers all the way to imperial stouts.
We are very excited to see which of our beers that are produced will become our core beers, and then try all the delicious other creations that the team brew.
What are your plans for your new brewhouse under construction?
Chris, the founder of Good Things and now Allkin, has 15 years in the engineering & sustainability industry. He invented the world’s first spent grain dehydrator, allowing us to turn our used brewery grains into a super flour, dehydrated & milled in house. Using this on pizzas at our events and sharing the flour across UK bakeries.
Sam, Chris and Ethan have been planning how we can make our brewery completely closed loop. Solar panels like we had before will be back up, but this time covering our entire brewery roof, creating a reed bed system that will treat all our own waste here on site. We will also use a combination of wind and water turbines to produce even more energy. Our aim is to switch off from the main grid and never need to go back, a true first of its kind given that we will also be running the first ever green energy electric powered steam generators to run our entire brew kit.
You opened Allkin Tap & Bottle last year with an ever-changing line up of beers on tap, canned craft beers and natural wines. Tell me more about your offering.
During our ‘Road to Unruin’ phase of Allkin we were very lucky to collaborate with 12 of the best breweries in the UK, the brewing industry is amazing as almost all of the independent companies are supporting and encouraging each other. When we opened the Tap & Bottle we decided that we wanted to have as many of those incredibly talented breweries showcased.
Having 14 lines of the best beers in the country and ever evolving means every time you come back in Allkin Tap & Bottle you have something new to try.
Our wine list is quite small but delicious, each style has its own house, ‘by the glass’ offering that are very accessible and easy drinking. For the more adventurous wine drinkers we have a wide variety of ‘by the bottle’ available. Luke, the third Director of Allkin, has a bar down in Brighton called ‘Vine Street’ where he has become more of a wine bar than beer which means that his knowledge on this area has helped us develop a menu that we think goes very nicely alongside our beer offering.
We have recently developed a really simple cocktail menu. At the moment we have three on the menu: A hot honey margarita, Chocolate old fashioned and the classic Negroni. All of these are £5 a pop, can’t go wrong with that.
You’ve had great food since opening thanks to local collabs. Are you providing this in house now?
We had some absolutely brilliant pop-ups, starting with the unbelievably talented Chris Chater from Squisito. who held a 3-month residency serving some of the tastiest Italian small plates. We’re really hoping that Chris will come back and do another pop-up at some point. We were also very lucky to have Robin Read from The Counter (our new Calverley Road neighbour) come in and take over our kitchen for the weekend, where he cooked the food that he loved to cook at home.
It was a lot of fun getting to try all these amazing cooks’ food, but we realised that we wanted to take it in-house. We had a think for a while about what kind of food we could do and what would help us as a company pairing the food with beer. We are a brewery and pushing beer production has to be our main focus. That is how we decided upon pizza. Something that is equal parts delicious as it is super easy to enjoy with a beer or a glass of wine, be that a quick visit or to settle in for the afternoon / evening. Our chef Marc has blown us away creating these 20” pizzas (also sold by the slice), with his current best seller being double Pepperoni. Thinking about it is making me want to go and get one now.
We named the pizza shop with a nod to where we came from: Good Things Pizza.
Thank you for being part of the TN card. Why did you want to get involved and how do you thank members for supporting local?
The TN card is something that we know helps to push and support local businesses in Tunbridge Wells and beyond. We truly believe that people that support local independent companies should be rewarded. We give TN card members a blanket 10% off all drinks all the time at Allkin Tap and Bottle. We want to give back to our community and this is a token of our appreciation. This is only the start of our relationship with the TN card we are looking forward to hosting events together and adapting our offerings in the future to keep things fresh.
What are your plans for the rest of the year and how can we support you?
Our biggest plan is to get the brewery site up and functioning, this will mean that we can supply our tap room with some of the freshest, most delicious beer you can get anywhere is Tunbridge Wells & way beyond. Once we have a full list of Allkin beers at the tap room we will be very happy. Anyone that wants to get involved on our journey at the brewery, we are continuously crowdfunding. We have raised just over £1,000,000 over the last 20 months and have a lot to show for it. Head to allkinbrewing.com for more info.
The tap room is an ever-evolving space that will never truly be finished. We want it to become a space that anyone and everyone feels welcome, a place for you to put your phone away for a few hours and truly connect with the people. Support us by coming in and experiencing what Allkin is. We are only at the beginning of the Allkin journey - there is so much more to come.
Members receive 10% off drinks every day all Allkin. Find out more about our member reward here.