Tindalls Brewery
Welcome to the first installment of getting to know the brewers and their beers in my shop YouDrink.
Today I visited Tindalls Brewery in Seething, Norfolk. I had a catch up chat with Head Brewer Michael Green.
Q1 TELL US ABOUT TINDALLS AND WHAT MAKES YOU DIFFERENT ?
MIKE: Originally started with my folks in the middle of nowhere quite far from pubs and when my sister Sarah was born they had to stay home to look after her. Beer back then in small packs was expensive nor was there many good beers. My Dad decided to start making his own beer just on a home brew scale as most small breweries do and then it started to get bigger as people in the village would come round and try the beer and say can i have some of that and it got to the point where they went to pubs and they would say you need some of this beer in your pubs. By this time it was time to get a bigger brewing kit and convert the stables into a microbrewery in Ditchingham,1998. In 2002, Demand was quite high and felt the need to expand which was when they moved to our current home of the brewery in seething. Things went well for the next 5 years but in 2007 they decided to retire as the industry had changed and people began to worry more about the price of a beer rather than the quality, taste and carbon footprint. They left the brewery dormant. I’ve always had an interest from a young age where i’d rather have the beer from the table than the milk in my bottle. Unofficially i started brewing 5 years ago in 2016 under the watchful eye of my dad, learning from him and brewing only twice the first year. It was just a casual thing to see if I enjoyed it and was any good at it. I very quickly became obsessed with it . the fascination came with tasting the ingredients , brewing with the ingredients and seeing I could pick out the ingredients from a finished brew. I find a lot of joy and satisfaction in getting the details right at every stage. I love tasting the beer and knowing what changes I can do to make it better and perfect the beers. I’ll always look to adapt recipes and adopt new tactics. In the meantime I had a full time job that i was working around to find time to make beer, deliver beer. I was even having to make deliveries on the way to and from work. I had a tough first year trying to organise myself and get recipes right. A lot of it was finding my feet and getting the branding right in 2019. So we went full on and made loads of beer for the lockdown to happen in march 2020. We had to adapt and did takeaway beer from the gates instead. Now here we are again trying to pick up where we left off before covid.
Q2 WHAT IS YOUR MOST SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENT TO DATE?
Mike: In 2018 we decided to enter some of our beers into a competition and didn’t really think anything of it. We went to the trade session and saw our cask of beer. It was foaming lots out of the spiral with a cloth over the top of it and a bucket underneath so there I was thinking what’s wrong with it ? Has it got an infection ? After a while we managed to get a taste of it and it was really good. It tasted perfect, nothing wrong with it. We had zero expectations and were prepared to walk home feeling quite merry after sampling a lot of beer. They started to announce the winners and our category was announced 3rd place Green King, 2nd Place Timothy Taylors and 1st place Tindall brewery. I Couldn’t believe there was me who had only been brewing for 5 minutes compared to some of them there, we beat them and I was feeling very proud of myself. We won Gold in the Brewers Selection Awards in 2018 with our seething pale. It was at that point I made the decision to quit my job and became a full time brewer.
There are lots of things that I’d say is my biggest achievement that you may not necessarily notice like our rebranding of the bottles, the general organisation and tidiness of the brewhouse. One memorable moment that will stay with me forever was in the Stafford Arms and my beer was on behind the bar. A group of lads sat on the table behind me and ordered a pint of caramel stout. He proceeded to tell his mates how good he thought the beer was and would definitely order it again. And he did. Hearing such honest positive reviews really has stuck with me and gives me the confidence to make more great beer.
Mike (Middle) posing with his award
Q3. HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE NAME TINDALLS BREWERY?
MIKE: my folks named it, where my parents lived in ditching ham there was a woods called Tindall’s wood with lots of history behind it. There isn’t any access to the public now as it’s owned by an estate. Where the original brewing was, it was surrounded by trees and that’s also where the Mistle Thrush on the logo came from because in the morning you could hear them. We used to be known as Tindall Ales but have now changed it to Tindall’s brewery as we didn’t want to limit ourselves to just ales. We want to create specialty beers and plan to make lager in the future.
Q4: WHAT WAS THE FIRST EVER BEER YOU MADE?
MIKE: First ever beer was Liberator before it was known as liberator pale ale. it was just the season and it was one of dad’s old recipes. We have now changed it slightly, rebranded and bought into the 21st century. That actually wasn’t my first ever beer brewed, I was wrong . It was actually the Thurlton cascade. That was with Boris at the Peoples Brewery. A very small independent brewer who brews for the love of it. I asked around alot of places to see if I could volunteer for a day or so to get some experience and lots of places said no, most didn’t want me to know their secrets but Boris was happy to let me come for the ride. By the end of the day I didn’t really know what we had just done but it was fun. It was all quite overwhelming. I really started to get to grips with it all when I was at the helm and dad was just overseeing.
Q5 : WHAT’S THE FUTURE HOLD FOR TINDALLS?
Mike: I see the future as very bright for Tindall’s, I’m always working on new beers never staying satisfied with what we’ve got. In the near future we are working on new fermenters that will allow us to venture into more versatile beers such as lagers which is something I’ve really wanted to get into for a long time . Hopefully early next year we can get that into place and expand our range. There is something I’m working on called ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’. It’s a project I’ve had on the go for about a year. All I can say is Champagne and beer. Really excited about it. We’ve had a go at it and am now perfecting it but we won’t release it until it’s ready.
Q6 HOW WOULD YOU CONVINCE PEOPLE TO BUY YOUR BEER?
MIKE: I think it would be to know our ethos , we are not trying to make as much money out of our beer, we don’t look at swapping out our ingredients for cheaper alternatives if it’s going to affect our end product. its not what we are about. I’m a beer drinker and I wouldn’t serve beer I wouldn’t happily enjoy myself so we are only trying to make the nicest beer possible. I don’t worry about spending extra on making the beer great where i feel the larger breweries would do whatever they could to get the best margins at the expense of you the customer.
That wraps it up. You can get a mixed 12 pack from our online shop that comes with free shipping to NR30 TO 35 AND IP18-19 postcodes.
Tindalls Brewery 12 Mixed Pack