Brewing Beer with Sam Kellie
The First and Last Brewery is an independent micro brewery in North Cumberland. So, in the middle of nowhere really! Sam and his wife set up the brewery in 2006. They mainly do cask beer for trade as well as bottle and can beer. The business mainly concentrates in the north-east but do bits across the UK as well.
What Made You Start Brewing?
Sam spent 10 years as a secondary school teacher and then spent 7 years working for a national youth charity. With them both being Newcastle based, Sam was spending too many hours in a day commuting. Working for such a big charity made him very weary of that world anyways. The politics (as there is with any large organisation), bureaucracy. By this point, Sam had a family and start thinking about what else he could be doing. He'd always been a keen home brewer and had some really good feedback from friends about his home brew. This desire gripped him to be his own boss. To escape the bureaucracy, to escape the politics. As the confidence slowly grew, he decided to make the leap and do it. They started by dipping their toes in the water, and then their ankles, and then their knees, and then their waist. A couple years later Steve was neck deep and hasn't looked back since.
http://thenext100days.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Start-brewing.mp4
Going From Idea to Business
With having a young family, it was a big risk going self employed and even more with his wife joining too. It took a lot of thinking through things carefully. They started doing internet research and passing round some beer for people to try ad get feedback from. Sam was fortunate enough to go part time so that he wasn't cutting out any income
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