BlackBar

BlackBar brewery is the incarnation of ten years of work for owner and Brewer Joseph Kennedy (aka Brewmonkey). It was back in Sixth form that the idea of a brewery really started to form in his head:

“I was sitting in a standard assembly, you know, the ones where you’re half switched off. The person talking asked ‘who is doing Chemistry and Biology?’ and I put my hand up. He said ‘You can go to Heriot Watt University and study brewing and distilling’. I can say at that moment this turned from a joke to an idea.”
Within a month Joe was at the City of Cambridge brewery on the old Cheddars Lane industrial estate in Cambridge, which now sits under Tescos on Newmarket Road.

“I asked if I could come along and brew for the day. I can say that it was a hard day, full of physical work, science and craft. Not that I knew that then, that view comes with hind sight. What I knew then, standing in the steaming mash tun at the end of a long day, was that I was still smiling. I loved every minute of that first day of professional brewing.”

And so the story begins.

Joe went through UCAS to apply to several universities, but ended with only one on his final choice list. Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh for a BSc in brewing and distilling. It was in the August of 2000 that he found I hadn’t gotten the grades to get in, but with a phone call and an anxious wait, he was accepted on a combined studies course following the Brewing course.

“So basically I got in through the back door because I had bugged the brewer so much. But what followed was four of the best years. I’m not saying they were easy, trouble free or other wise but they were great years with good friends and great experiences. I left the university with a 2:2 BSc Brewing and Distilling class of 2004. I spent the next six months working out what I wanted to do. While working in a not so well known whisk(e)y bar, I ended up heading off to live and study in Japan for a year at the Shodokan Aikido Hombu. Another great year and an experience which made me into the person I am today.”

On returning to Edinburgh in the January of 2006, Joe was lucky enough to get a part time job in local pub and find work with Stewarts brewing of Edinburgh. I was with Stewarts’ part time for a few months. But then after a chance meeting I was asked to join as assistant brewer at Harviestoun Brewery in Alva.

“To say this was a dream would be an understatement. I was luck enough to work with and along side the one of the best brewing teams in Scotland. This little brewery which started not long after I was born had grown to be a small but internationally recognised brewery. For nearly two years I was the assistant (read coal face) brewer and I learnt a lot in those two years and was taught even more. So to my friends and colleagues at Harviestoun I thank you and blame you for some of the way I am today. (Thank you, you know who you are.)”

Being an early twenty something, Joe ended up looking towards the far west of Canada in the summer of 2008, and ended up in Suffolk. Though “not quite the plan”, it was here that he got a chance to run a place for a much larger brewery.

“They had introduced me to the Gunners Daughter and the Blonde Bombshell of the Old Cannon Brewery (OCB) brew pub. I got the job when it hit the market and within months I was running a brew pub. Not the whole of it just the beer side.”

Within eighteen months Joe had doubled beer production & sales, and had created another five recipes to add to the original house three. Over the next two years he also started the Old Cannon Beer Festival (now in its fourth year (2011) and was lucky enough to send the brewery towards a great future.

It was in the summer of 2010 that, due to personal reasons, Joe left the Old Cannon Brewery and took another job. The commuting didn’t last long, and three months later he quit the brewery and headed back north to Edinburgh.

“It was then with a month and bit before the mid winter festival that I decided I needed to follow my dream of starting my own brewery or brew pub. It took till the first of January 2010 before I had narrowed that idea down to a workable plan, and the start of my BlackBar project was born…”