Like all the best ideas Mysterious Brewing Company started as a crazy conversation over a few pints. Except this wasn’t just any old pint of beer…
However, to start at the beginning we need to wind the clock back a little further. Ken and Adam met through Reading Amateur Brewers, a highly active home brew club in Berkshire. In early 2022, Adam had talked the organisers of Burghfest, a charity beer festival (run by the Burghfield Santas), in to allowing the home brew club to run a competition to find the festivals very own special brew. Andy Parker at Elusive Brewing had agreed to scale up the winning home brew and produce it commercially… all that was missing, was a winning beer.
Twenty beers had been brewed by members of the club and the standard, as always, was exceptionally high. But there was one beer that stood out clearly as a sessionable and flavoursome beer. Ken’s name was called out as the winner and the first chapter of the mystery was now written.
It was now June and the brewday had arrived. Ken got stuck in to mashing in with the team at Elusive with much support and encurragement from the watching Burghfield Santa’s (it was also one of the hottest days of the year!)
The beer was released in early July, selling commerically as Mystery Fox across the region and at Burghfield Santa events over the summer. It was then brewed a second time ready for Burghfest which took place at the end of September.
Burghfest was now upon us, and Adam had arranged a “Meet the Brewers” event for members of RAB and for the brewers supplying the event to have a sociable beer together. Brewers from 5 local suppliers attended, during the afternoon Adam started chatting to Andy Watts from Little London Brewery in Silchester.
A year earlier Adam had finished writing a business plan to launch a new brewery but had decided in the current financial clement it was probably not the best time. As the afternoon progressed Andy Watts made an incredible offer, one that was simply too good to refuse.
Later that evening, Ken and Adam agreed that maybe it wasn’t such a stupid idea to start producing beer commercially after all – Mysterious Brewing was born!
Much planning and brewing followed and in January 2023, Ken and Adam started brewing with Andy at Little London. Of course, the first test brew was our reworking of the winning Burghfest beer….
Our deal with Little London meant that we added our own 1000L fermentation vessels, it was an incredibly exciting day when they arrived. Whilst we didn’t go through the headaches of commissioning an entire new brew house, those early brews didn’t go exactly to plan…
As a start-up getting the ingredients we wanted at the time we wanted them, proved the most challenging – from lack of stock to missing courier deliveries. So much so, that our first big batch brew turned out to be a bit of a “Plan B” and our originally scheduled brew we felt had been “Cursed” by supply issues.
Fast forward to Thursday 25th May, launch night, we had been busy brewing a range of beers. Now we had the challenge of trying to come up with a suitable venue to release our opening line up. We had a great deal of support from local outlets, but, when Jody from Reading’s famous The Nags Head pub said that “you’re doing the launch here, at the Nags” who were we to argue.
Over our launch weekend we sold the equivalent of 1,700 pints across four days at five venues: The Nags Head, The Hive, Back of the Woods, A Hoppy Place and Bracknell Beer Festival.
Since the May bank holiday, Mysterious Brewing has grown its reach across Berkshire and beyond. We have already expanded with a new Canning machine and have recently started delivering further afield to the south coast and Manchester.
However, without you, our supporters and customers we wouldn’t exist, and we can’t wait to share our latest beers with you. This is only the beginning…
Cheers, Adam & Ken