Danny Ennis has been on our radar for a few years now. One of the pioneers who joined our Brew Crew when we first launched MASHED! Mag, Danny has gone from ambitious homebrewer to opening his own nanobrewery, Small Batch Brewing Co - bang in the middle of a global pandemic. In issue 06, (Winter 2020/21) we followed his launch phase, now over a year later we catch up with him again to follow his developments.

YB: We last caught up with you towards the end of 2020 when you were just about to launch. Can you tell us where you’re at with your brewery now and how you’ve got there?

DE: It seems like I have blinked and we are a year ahead. Where do I start? Ha ha… It’s been pretty stressful at times to be honest, to the point where I did consider stopping - a momentary lapse of reason.

We released Fruit Salad Waterfall and Saturation 7 close together and soon realised that we didn’t have enough capacity to continue to supply the few taprooms that we had on the books.

So we started to try to save every penny we had and managed to purchase 2 x 150L conicals. By then our Instagram audience (@small_batch_brewing_co) had grown and more taprooms had contacted us for supplies. So we just kept brewing.

Then exactly a year on we were approached by a private investor who had been following our story and wished to purchase our next lot of fermenters. It goes with out saying we were happy to accept his offer!

We moved from a Brewtools B80 to a Brewtools B150 but are considering going for a 500L commercial brewery kit, which would be purchased from the sale of my house. Yes, I sold my house to fund this project! Ha ha - let’s hope it works! But that wont be until we find a unit and complete the house sale.

From the investment that we received we purchased 4 x 300L unitank fermenters and a chilling unit, which is currently on a container ship somewhere. Once we’ve got our new fermenters we’ll be able to brew around 1400L a month.

YB: What have been the highlights and challenges of the past year?

DE: The highlights have been the positive reviews and the private messages I get telling me to keep pushing forward with it - it’s what keeps me going, to be honest.

The challenges are not having enough space to do multiple jobs. We’re currently looking for unit space but it’s proving to be difficult to get the size we want.

YB: What have you learned along the way?

DE: Be patient and be consistent, the recipes on brew day must be exact every single time - no room for error - just so every recipe tastes the same as the last.

YB: What brews will you have on the go this year?

DE: We plan on releasing 3 pale ales, 3 pilsners (New Zealand, Czech, German export beer) and maybe a West Coast IPA. But we will also be releasing our own Gin brand very soon. We’re currently getting the label designed and talking to the distillery.

YB: What ingredients are you enjoying brewing with these days?

Most of my beers are NEIPA’s so I’m using lots of flaked grains at the moment, but I’ll be moving to other styles soon. I wouldn’t mind making a sour with fruit puree but that’s definitely a future thing!

YB: Where can we get hold of your beers?

DE: We have our own webshop (small-batch-brewing-co.uk) that we can sell direct from, but sometimes stocks are low so the best thing is to subscribe to our newsletter and get updates on stock levels and events. We will also insert current stockists in our newsletter.

YB: Where do you hope to be this time next year?

DE: Would love to be in the unit with the new fermenters and hopefully the new brewing kit. By that time we will be shipping out polykegs and cans to whoever wants them.

I like the idea of employing someone to help around the brewery but will see how far we can push this! To be honest, I couldn’t of done it without the support of my family, Amanda (wife) and kids Declan, Madison, Samuel. All the nights spent in the brewery after a 12 hour shift to can and label the beers, miles and miles of delivery driving, batching by hand. Let’s hope they stick around as we progress!  

I would like to thank everyone who has purchased our beers, it means so much to us and helps us push forward.

Follow the journey and 

see what’s brewing:

Instagram: @small_batch_brewing_co 

Facebook: @SmallBatchBrewingCo.uk 

Order beer and merch:  

www.small-batch-brewing-co.uk