Canopy Beer Co | Q&A

Are you curious to know about the people behind the beers you buy? Or perhaps you want to know what inspires brewers to brew and beer bloggers to blog? Our “Q&A” posts are a light hearted way of getting to know people working in, and connected to, the beer and alcohol industry.
Today’s post features Estelle Theobalds from Canopy Beer Co.

What inspired you to start the brewery?   Living in London for the last ten years has been a real privilege as we witnessed the start of London’s craft beer revolution. All around us new beers, bars and tap rooms were springing up bringing new, innovative beer. My husband (our head brewer) had been brewing at home since he was at school and started taking the hobby more and more seriously. As the home-brew kit began to get out-of-hand we began to look at expanding into a small warehouse lock-up. Eventually we found a perfect railway arch just a stone’s throw from where we lived. We secured the lease and Canopy Beer Co. was born: we’re a husband and wife team. My husband does the brewing and I do everything else!

What do you think makes a great beer?   Beer doesn’t have many ingredients but I think what makes a good beer is combining those ingredients into a coherent drink; one that tastes more than just the sum of its parts. Beer isn’t about having a glass of malt with some hops thrown in, they need to work together and complement each other. We’re proud to say that we think all of our beers do exactly that.

What is your favourite style of beer?   We love Belgian beer at Canopy Beer Co. and before we had a brewery we used to ride bikes in Belgium. Our Milkwood Amber Ale is a nod to those fantastic Belgian beers with their complex yeast flavours. We’re really proud of it and think it offers something new to London. Our Brockwell IPA is our best seller with its fantastic Citra hops, and that’s the one we usually take home after a long day at the brewery.

Are there any other breweries which have influenced you?  We really admired what Kernel had achieved and how quickly they had expanded. I’ll never forget the first time I tasted a Kernel IPA dry-hopped with Citra which literally blew my socks off.

Do you prefer bottled or canned beers?   We do everything (brewing, bottling, kegging, labelling etc.) in-house at Canopy, and nothing is done off the premises. All of our beers are therefore bottled at the moment, but we are aiming to trial some canning in 2016. We think our new Kolsch would taste really good out of a can.

What has been the hardest thing to master with learning to brew and running the brewery?  We opened our tap room in May of this year (Weds – Sunday) and it has been really fun to see people enjoying our beers, get honest feedback and learn more about what people want from a microbrewery like ours. The job has lots of ups and downs. It can be quite stressful when we’re brewing but the best part of the job is meeting our customers, whom we have quite a close relationship with, talking about beer and tasting new beers. We have regular socials in the brewery where we get in loads of new beers and taste them and talk about our next brew – I’m not sure if that really counts as work though.

What is the silliest thing you’ve done done whilst drunk?  Decided to start a brewery!

Thank you to Estelle and Canopy Beer Co for taking the time to take part.

You can view and buy beers from Canopy Beer Co here.