Our co-founder Miranda Hudson spoke to Nick Law from the Hop Foward podcast about our adventure so far in our slice of creative solitude and finding thanks as we look forward

Being here reenchants you to the great outdoors. There’s something here that grounds you and connects you, it romantices you and becomes an ethos. For Bates is a very natural return to something he’s grown up with whereas for me it’s entirely new but I feel embedded. I think the location is the brewery, it’s bigger than the brewery. We’ve totally submerged ourselves into our landspace. The landscape, the way of life, it’s from a different era with it’s own momentum.

For Bates it’s working in the seasons and having some creative solitude to be inspired by going at that slower tempo and looking at things more seasonally. Seeing how the weather has affected local barley fields and being embedded in the growing makes it tangible. A local maltster will come to pick up beers from the brewery and tell us about the crops and the new varietals he’s working with. When grain turns up at the brewery Bates will already know what that harvest will be like because we’ve lived among it.

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For the next year, you can’t have a crystal ball but I hope people will remember the breweries that looked after them through this and I hope there’ll be a wider understanding of how to support independent beer. We’re just going to roll with the punches and to remain true to taking beer somewhere new and celebrating traditional styles. Maybe we’re going to see palates evolve a little bit and we’ll see good beer made with product integrity.