Brewery round table: Blue Monkey, Bang The Elephant and Liquid Light talk all things ale ahead of Nottingham Craft Beer Festival

Please tell us a little bit about the history of your brewery…

Ian: BlueMonkey was founded by John Hickling and formed as a company back in 2008. Our first brew was undertaken in his garage in Ravenshead the year before. That brew was named Original, and went on to win awards at the Nottingham Beer Festival that year. The brewery then started in Manners Road, industrial estate in Ilkeston on a ten-barrel kit. After about a year we had outgrown this and moved to a new kit and location near IKEA at Giltbrook, which is where we are today.

Thom: Liquid Light Brew Co was founded in a shed in Sneinton in 2017. However in 2021 we ran a successful crowdfunding campaign and moved on up to a slightly bigger shed in Sneinton. It’s in the Robin Hood Industrial Estate and is 3200 sq/ft to be exact. This is where we are now. It’s where we brew all our beers from and also opens up as a taproom on weekends.

Michael: Bang The Elephant was founded by Nigel Patton and myself in 2017. We bonded over our love of craft beer and started in a backroom at Nigel’s house in Long Eaton, brewing every weekend trying to teach ourselves as we went. As you can imagine we made quite a bit of bad beer at first as we started trying to get things right. However, as we improved we started selling our beer to the market. Initially we were brewing on a 20l kit, but it became evident quickly that we needed to scale up. Eventually we took on the old Abstract Jungle Brewery premises in Langley Mill, which is where brew now.

Who came up with the brewery name and what does it mean?

Michael: It was Nigel. It comes from an old Victorian slang phrase ‘Bang Up To The Elephant,’ which means a job well done! We both have a fondness of the Victorian era and steampunk style art, so we based our main branding on this and a lot of our original and core beer names come with a Victorian influence.  We both thought the name was catchy and matched the style we wanted for the brewery.

Thom:  Credit for the name Liquid Light goes to my brother Joe. We were watching a documentary about Pink Floyd and some footage from the UFO club came up. They had all these amazing oil colours projected onto the band and the rest is history. The branding was a natural evolution from the name and is very close to our hearts. The background for every pump clip is designed by us using the liquid light techniques we have learned over the years. 

Ian: John and his uncle Trevor Vickers came up with the name Bluemonkey from John’s grandfather working at the Stanton Ironworks. He used to comment that the furnace's blue flames were called ‘the monkeys’. All our branding actually uses a chimp, which is technically not a monkey and thus creates a great talking point.

Tell us about your  role. What do you do day-to-day? 

Ian: I am Commercial Director for the company and I look after the day to day running of the business including the pubs. I was in the garage for the first ever brew but didn’t join the company properly until about ten years ago.

Thom: I’m the Director and Head Brewer. I’m the founder so I have been here from the start. Though I’m also our accountant, toilet cleaner, deliveryman etc. We are a pretty small team here, so we do tend to wear many hats. My day to day consists of looking after and brewing the beers and spending more time than I’d like in the office doing the boring things like accounting.

Michael: I’m one of the two founders and day to day I do a bit of everything. However, mostly I brew, do the artwork, and fix things, you wouldn’t believe how often something in a brewery needs fixing! We all pretty much cover most of the brewery aspects, but I suppose my area is technical and graphic design above all else, which suits me well.

What is it that you particularly love about beer and the beer industry?

Ian: I think it’s the social aspect of the whole thing and I love seeing people enjoying something I have created. Across the industry we are a great bunch of likeminded individuals that, although sometimes in opposition, get on really well together and share a passion.

Michael: The UK craft beer scene has so many lovely genuine people working in it. There are so many people I’ve met over the past eight years who I now call great friends, from fellow brewers to suppliers and customers alike. It's such a warm inviting environment to be involved in.

Thom: I’ve always had an appreciation for ale and various beers. My natural curiosity for how things are made and learning the inner workings of things is what originally drove me to give brewing a go, and that continues to this day. The industry as a whole has definitely seen hard times of late, but I feel honoured and indeed obligated to carry on the rich tradition of brewing that we have in this country.

What’s the best-selling beer that you make?

Michael: I wouldn’t say we have a best-selling beer as we change things up so much and it’s rare we revisit recipes often enough to have them regularly available. However, one that springs to mind would be Blue Steel, which is a blue raspberry and coconut slushy sour, which people always seem to go wild for! It is actually blue and tastes like blue raspberry sweets covered in coconut, it is always a crowd pleaser at festivals, and you can expect to see this back at NCBF25 in June.

Ian: BG Sips our 4% pale is our biggest seller, closely followed by the 4.6% Infinity IPA. They are both very different in their style but equally moreish. It is available locally where an independent beer is allowed on the pumps. I think our individual branding helps the sale but equally a good consistent beer that should taste the same wherever you buy a pint.

Thom: Our best-selling beer by far is Day Tripper, a 4.3% hazy pale ale. This beer was a culmination of everything I learned brewing for Totally Brewed in my early days and then continuing to cuckoo brew at Magpie Brewery. I wanted a juicy hazy pale that would work in cask and keg. After finding the perfect yeast for the job I got some amarillo hops, which had seen a little less popularity at the time due to the bigger bolder US hops coming through and paired it with some from Motueka in New Zealand. This combo gave a lovely aroma of orange and lime, and we found the amarillo in particular to be a great hop for double dry hopping. I think it has been successful due to its approachable ABV and impactful flavours.

How far do your beers travel outside of Nottingham? 

Ian: We sell all over the British Isles. Our own two dray vans cover a radius of seventy miles from the brewery five days a week. We have been seen in the North of Scotland and down at the tip of Cornwall.

Thom: Our beer makes it right across the UK due to our wholesale network. There are few major cities that our beer hasn’t made an appearance in, though Nottinghamshire will always be a huge part of our distribution. We have made some great friends in the local scene who we continuously supply. We have sent beer abroad a handful of times, with the furthest being a bar in Berlin that hosted a Liquid Light tap takeover for Berlin Beer Week.

Michael: We deliver our beer around most of the UK ourselves and with distribution partners. We deliver into Nottingham and Derby on a regular basis, but we also export to Holland, Norway and China. A lot of our high ABV beers that we are known for, now end up as export due to the UK’s constraining duty system for high ABV.

Of all the beers you make, what’s your personal favourite? 

Ian: Infinity has to be first and Plus One a very close second as I just love the citrus background these beers have. Next has got to be our Rhubarb & Custard pale. I just love rhubarb, and we pack 160kg of the fruit into this brew.

Michael: My favourite is a variation of Balloon Juice, peach and black tea sour which we have made a few times. I got the idea from my love of peach iced tea. We added a batch of that beer to oak barrels with more peach, more black tea and brett yeast then aged it for eighteen months and called the result Weaponised Funk! The result was sour, juicy, and funky as hell - absolutely everything I love in a beer.

Thom: My personal favourite varies week to week. I love a pint of our Wizard of Finance best bitter in the taproom and often struggle to choose between that or Ramble On our 3.9% Mosaic pale, which is often overshadowed by its bigger brother Day Tripper. But the beer I’m most proud of at the moment is the sixth iteration of our lager. Volume VI is a 4.9% Munich Helles style lager and I just love the balance of sweetness from the malt, the slightly fruity bread character from the yeast and bitterness from the hops. We have decided to settle on this as our core lager recipe and plan to move the ‘Volume’ Series onto other styles. 

According to stats over a hundred UK breweries closed down last year. In Notts we’ve seen the likes of Totally Brewed and Navigation go under since 2023. How has business been for you over the last couple of years?

Michael: This industry is tough, there are a lot of great breweries out there, all fighting for a small piece of the pie. When you have big macro breweries disguised as small independent craft breweries making the market smaller and smaller for real independent craft beer, it's only going to continue to get harder to turn a profit in the current financial climate.

Thom: The loss of local Totally Brewed and Navigation hit us hard as we have staff from both breweries working with us right now. Business has been tough since Covid and Brexit among other things, and it’s no secret that the industry has been really struggling. While we have had our ups and downs overall, we have been steadily growing and have seen a marked improvement since opening here in 2021. We are optimistically looking to the future and believe we will continue to grow at a steady pace.

Ian: Don’t think this game is easy, as it really isn’t. I think lots of people got on the brewery scene quickly and flooded the market with some very nice beers. Some were serious businesses, some hobbies and some were already on the decline. I think we have a difficult road ahead but if carefully navigated we can succeed.

Aside from any you are involved in running, what are your favourite pubs and bars in Nottingham to hang out in and go for a beer?

Ian: I love the castle area with The Crow, The Roundhouse, The Castle and Fothergills. Also the Canalhouse has to be up there for atmosphere as well.

Thom: The King Billy is my local and has long been my favourite place for a pint. They always have a fantastic selection of beers, lager and cider. The food from Carolina’s Chilli is awesome too. I’m a big fan of so many places in Nottingham though, Junkyard/Kilpin are both great, Kean’s Head is an old favourite, Canalhouse holds some fond memories and has a great vibe and selection of beer. A special mention also needs to go to Stratford Haven in West Bridgford. It was my local growing up and I have probably spent more time in that pub than any other in Nottingham.

Michael: I don’t get out in Nottingham anywhere near as much as I would like to, but when I can get out I’ve got few regular places I always love to hit up, The Herbert Kilpin and The Kean’s Head have been my absolute favourites for a while now, they cover the type of beers I drink and I love the atmosphere.

What’s your favourite Notts-brewed beer from another brewery and why?

Ian:  I think that list would be far too long to list. In Nottingham we have one of the best beer scenes in the country as proved by those on show at the Castle beer festival in April. It’s too hard to put a name to the best in my opinion.

Michael: For me it has to be Reckless Dweeb. Ben is only a nano brewery out of his garage but is consistently making some great beers and trying to challenge himself with new styles, pushing what he can. He reminds me of us, wanting to do things a little different and loving what he does, that comes out in the beer he makes. The Cherry Mare poured at NCBF24 on our bar was one of my favourites to date.

Thom: Harvest Pale by Castle Rock without a doubt. It was my introductory beer to the world of ale and it has the pedigree as a multiple award winner. I have sunk more pints of that beer than any other except my own.

How do you see the future of beer over the next few years - both nationally and for your own brewery?

Michael: I think the industry as a whole needs help from the government, specifically it needs changes in regulations and duty. We are going to continue to see pubs and breweries continue to close at a huge rate unless something changes and that’s sad. The UK has a proud brewing and pub heritage which is having the life sucked out of it. Having said this, we would love to have a tap room and hopefully this becomes a reality, watch this space!

Ian: I think cask is making a huge comeback now. This is a British tradition and the rest of the world can’t beat it. Keg is good but there is far more competition out there for us to compete with so much harder to sell. We are hard at work creating a bespoke tap room called ‘The Monkey Bar’ at our premises in Giltbrook. Keep your eyes peeled for an opening date.

Thom: I honestly think the future's bright. There are always challenges but we are seeing increasing demand and winning national awards for some of our beers, which we are very proud of. We have some ideas we want to implement to get more of our beer out in the world this year, but all good things come to those who wait. 

What have you got planned for Nottingham Craft Beer Festival 2025?

Ian: We have some great keg beers and real ales. We’re in the planning stages at the moment, but there will be a great variety from sours to stouts. It’s a huge honour to finally be able to showcase our beers at the festival.

Thom: We have some exciting new beers this year, but I will keep quiet for now. You will just have to attend to try them!

Michael: We have a few special beers lined up, some very special imperial stouts that haven’t been sold in the UK other than a few beer festivals so far this year. We also have some new beers that will be poured for the first time. If you are familiar with us, you know they will be bonkers. Be kind to each other, you never know what someone is going through and see you all at NCBF25!

Nottingham Craft Beer Festival takes over Sneinton Market Avenues on Friday 19 and Saturday 20 June. Tickets for each session are £14+BF and include a souvenir glass, live music and more. 

nottinghamcraftbeer.co.uk