Northern Monk Brewing - Interview

Interview with Russell Bissett

As there is great potential within this live brief, I conducted an interview with Russell (co-founder) to get to know the brewery and himself more. 
I have made this interview available on my One Third Blog which is part of the Design Context publication, I feel great knowing that my practice is syncing because of all aspects of the module.



You describe the brewery as progressive and bold, what is your creative process like when developing a new beer?We generally start by looking back. The majority of the beers in our range are inspired by British beer styles of old. New World IPA is a prime example of this. We then look at what we could bring to the table that’s a bit different; in the case of New World this was the New World hops (although in reality New World hops have been used in British brewing since the late 1800’s). Most of our recipes will then go through a couple of homebrew pilot tests. Which we diligently and dutifully test. Then comes the name - This is the tricky bit and best tackled after testing the pilot beers.

Regarding the artwork and identity of Northern Monk, was it something that developed over time from the   first signs of starting a brewery or was it a sudden spark of an idea?Northern Monk has been on the cards since 08’. At the time we felt that there wasn't really anyone in the UK doing a great job of more progressive brewing, especially not in a way that paid tribute to the history and heritage of brewing in this country. Times have since changed and the UK is a hot bed of breweries taking numerous different approaches to their craft and is a fantastic place to be as a drinker and brewery.

A lot of your philosophy is taken from the Monks and their community focus, when did you first realise that you wanted to celebrate this history?The idea that beer and community go hand in hand has been around since the earliest beers were brewed thousands of years ago. In fact there are some that would argue that beer itself was the reason humans began to lay down roots and form communities. Whilst we’re called Northern Monk, which is intended to pay homage and tribute to that, we’re as much a celebration of Beer and the role it has played in society for years as we are for monastic brewing. Our Northern Monk is just the visual representation of that; If we were called Northern Monkey, the community ethos would still be at the core of what we do. It’s been an inherent aspect of the company from the outset.

The market is expanding at a phenomenal rate bringing with it the use of non-traditional ingredients in the brewing process, anything unusual you would like to add to a future brew?Yeah essence a’ la Monk. We’ve been to Fountains abbey and collected some DNA from an old habit that we intend to add to some Bad Habit we’re barrel ageing. This will then be passed through a piece of material from the habit to try and recreate the taste of a habit.  We’re going to call it Proper Old Bad Habit.
This isn’t true.
Our focus is going to be on a core range of solid IPA’s, Pale Ales, Stouts and Porters with a couple of Belgian inspired beers in there along the way. Sure, our IPA’s will be packed more than ever before with US and Anitpodean varieties and we’ll be introducing double and triple IPA’s to our range. You may find some Strannik ageing in some barrels and yes there will be the occasional twist to recipes. We also may have one or two more left field releases up our sleeve but we’ll save them as surprises.

How did the collaboration with Saltaire first come about?Saltaire Brewery has been incredibly supportive of us from the outset. We’ve featured at a number of their beer clubs and festivals. For me personally they’ve been my local brewery since I was of (legal) drinking age and have been one of the inspirations for what we’ve set out to do. They make consistently solid beers and are a fantastic bunch of people to work with.

Collaboration brews are very common currently, speaking from experience, what do you think you get out of a collaboration that you don’t get from brewing a beer solo?I think collaboration beers are a real celebration of the comradery that is present in the beer industry. It’s relatively unique to the sector and in my opinion something that should be embraced. Each and every brewer has a different approach to recipe formulation and technique, it’s a great way to bring creative minds together and create something unique. We’ve been lucky enough to create some beers in collaboration with awesome breweries; Bad Habit with Weird Beard, the Salted Lemon Wit with Bad Seed and the Smoked Porter with Saltaire are all stand outs and each have been fairly unique in their own way. Our brewer Brian Dickson also has his roots in collaborative brews and it's something we both wanted to take forward and build on with Northern Monk. Also, as nomadic brewers setting up a permanent base we made the decision that we would prefer to brew in collaboration with other breweries and involve the people with whom we’re brewing the beer rather than just brew something and leave it at the host brewery to ferment out. Collaborations will remain something we’ll do once we’re set up in Leeds and our list of ‘home-leg’ brews is starting to stack up but it’s something we’re really looking forward to.

Other than plenty of fresh beer, have you got any plans for the local Leeds community in your first year at the new site?We’ve got more plans than we know what to do with. I think a little project involving Drew Millard, Bundobust, Gateway Brewing Co (Mumbai) and a couple of mechanical elephants is the one I’m most excited about. Unfortunately I’m not at liberty to give any more details away at this stage! Outside of that we’ve got a couple of festivals we’ll be a key part of, including Leeds International Beer Festival which promises to be better than ever this year, we're also planning to work closely on something with North Star Coffee roasters. We’re working hard behind the scenes to get brewing at our site which has been our main focus for some time. However setting up a tap room and 10BBL brewery in a listed building in a City Centre was never going to be a walk in the park!!