A special brew

Everards tenant Graham Yates tells Ewan Turney how a passion for real ale has helped boost sales by £4,000 a week at the Brunswick Inn, Derby

How I got here

I started off working for Ansells as a shift brewer in Birmingham. I did 10 years there until the brewery shut in 1980 and moved on to a few other brewing jobs. In 1986, I joined Everards to set up its quality assurance department and once that was done I went back to brewing. Four years ago I got a call from my boss and he said do you want to run a pub? I said no its a mugs game and I have never done it before. But it had a brewery. I came here in September 2002 as a manager. I took a tenancy agreement in December 2003.

Why my pub is a success

1. Real ale - That is the main attraction. I have 16 beers on handpull. We are renowned for our real ale.

2. The brewery - people love to see it espec-ially real ale drinkers. They love to stand, watch and chat while I am brewing.

3. Atmosphere - We don't have pool tables or any music, except for at functions, so the whole ethos of the pub is good beer and good chat.

My brewery

We brew twice a week and use the best malt I can get - four different types from Warminster and I use hops from Hereford as Kent has gone a bit off the boil. I get the yeast from Everards once a week. Our best selling beer is a 4.2% abv malty brown ale called Second Brew or the Usual. Next best is Triple Hop, which features in Roger Protz's 300 beers to try before you die. I also have Brunswick Pilsener brewed with German lager hops and am doing a 6% ale called Black Sabbath at the moment.

My brewery tours

We do a brewery tour, pint and meal for £7.50 but I have tended to go off that deal as people don't always want a meal. They want a tour and a few beers. If they want to do it, I fix up a time for it. Most of the time people just want a chat with a brewer and a few beers. They want to discuss problems they may have with their home-brewing kits. A tour only takes a quarter of an hour. On one tour I scared them all by taking the light bulbs out of one cellar. We rigged up a voice activated ghoul - it was Hallowe'en after all. We had some laughing and others crying!

My best business idea

Outside of real ale, I suppose getting in touch with the three local hotels and companies such as Rolls Royce and Toyota has been great. I have a function room that can take 100 people. We do a lot of parties for the companies and have also done some weddings and retirement bashes. We drop leaflets into the hotels telling people what we do and where we are.

We also do jazz on a Thursday and am trying to find a folk band for the Wednesday slot. We are also very close to Pride Park, home of Derby County FC, and are open to both home and away supporters. We get the older fans and while the two sets debate the game, there has never been any serious trouble.

My Staff

The staff are mostly students and younger than the customers but I think the customers like that. Their job is a lot more varied than a usual bar job. I have 16 beers on handpull and they have got to know the beers. If someone asks for a light, malty or hoppy beer, they have to know which beer to recommend.

At the start of a shift, if there is a new beer on, I encourage them to try it. When a barrel goes I have a policy that the line must be cleaned there and then. We use dye in the cleaning fluid so we don't poison anyone. The end part is critical to the whole process of real ale. You can supply good beer but if there is sloppy

cellarmanship or salesmanship, then everything is let down. In a sense the staff are taking ownership of the product.

How I ensure good beer quality

The key to keeping good beer is not to keep

it but to sell it. I try to turn around tubs in three days.

I go round first thing every morning and take a taste of each to make sure they are good. There is nothing worse than serving bad beer. The last pint of a barrel may look right and smell right but not taste right. It is important we have good regulars who can say to us it is the end of the barrel. In some places you may not want to complain about the quality of beer, but here we encourage it because it helps us.

Other things are very simple, like hygiene. Anything like a dipstick, lines or the glass that touches the beer must be clean. Get the basics right and its easy.

My beer festival

I have them at the end of September and they last three days. I probably take £8,000 and more if there is football on. We have a scaffold up in the biggest room downstairs which houses 28 beers. I call it the cathedral of beer. In addition to the 16 at the main bar there are three at the Everards-sponsored bar upstairs along with live music. We charge £2.20 per pint and I also print 1,000 festival programmes with tasting notes.

In terms of marketing we do an advert in the local paper and try and get some editorial coverage. Our student staff also distribute flyers at University as it is two weeks after Freshers week. We also encourage customers to take flyers to work and pin them up.

My Pub

Tenancy: Everards three-year rolling

Turnover 2002: £6,500 a week

Turnover now: £10,000 a week

Rent: £60,000 a year including brewery

Wet:Dry split: 95%: 5%

Beers: 16

GP on home brew: 60%

GP on other beer: 40%

Price per pint: £1.60-£2.50

Staff: 10, three full-time

Barrels brewed: 15 per week

Awards: Derby Camra Pub of the Year 2004