The Brit is on vacation visiting family in the UK, so what better opportunity than to visit a few pubs and a brewery! The southern county of Sussex is home to Harvey’s Brewing, originating in 1745, but it also boasts plenty of new craft breweries including the one we visited, Firebird Brewing, located in an old brickworks factory in Rudgwick, Sussex.
Co-founder / brewer Richard Peters was kind enough to allow us to sit down with him at the end of the day’s operations, in the brewery taproom. Firebird was started by Richard and his business partner, Bill King around 8 years ago. Both of them have long brewing pedigrees with Bill coming from the legendary Sussex brewery, King & Barnes, and Richard from Courage. As we chatted, there were cleaning operations going on for kegs and their bottler, so we get plenty of atmospheric banging as the bungs were hammered back in!
That said we were able to chat with Richard and find out some of the differences between the US and UK craft scene, plus sample a couple of their excellent brews. And to keep their employees happy, a perk to working at Firebird is haircuts on a Monday after work in the taproom!!
Tune in to this episode to get a great insight into modern British brewing! Cheers!
Firebird Beers Sampled:
- Heritage, Sussex Best Bitter, 4.0% ABV
- Work Ethic, New England IPA, 5.0% ABV
- Bohemia, Unfiltered Pilsner, 4.8% ABV
- Vice, Hefeweizen, 5.0% ABV
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