TMT Day 7 - Stroud Brewery

A sit down with the found of Stroud Brewery, Greg Pilley.

Other than walking and driving through the pastoral beauty of the Cotswolds, I had a few chats lined up with some breweries and publicans in the area. First up was Greg Pilley, founder of Stroud Brewery.

I sat down for coffee with Greg at their taproom, just outside Stroud's main downtown. He's had an enviable background, first working on conservation projects worldwide and later studying the community-building effects of alcohol in even the most remote regions.

Stroud Brewery feels like the perfect embodiment of his work - a place to advocate for a more sustainable world and build a local community. Beer is just the conduit.

Our conversation spanned the hoppy gamut, so I had to ask him about pubs, especially to someone whose work has revolved around community. There's no denying the role of pubs in the local community over the last few hundred years. In times when people didn’t have living rooms, they were the “third place,” one of conversation and democracy. But pubs haven't always been the most inclusive spaces, a fact that can’t easily be ignored (especially in the context of this newsletter). So, with the pub’s decline, is there an alternative? Greg submits the taproom.

Right when you enter the taproom, there's a big wall of all the upcoming events, all of which are designed to make sure folks feel included - like senior nights to make sure the elderly - a rather large population in the Cotswolds - have a place to meet. When he gave us a brief tour of the space, there was a music group practicing in one room and a woman providing mental health services in another.

With more and more breweries with taprooms these days, why couldn't they be used as a community space? To Greg, the role of the pub and who it’s for has always been dynamic, and this might be the next evolution.

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At the core of Stroud is sustainability, both in how the beer is made and how the beer is consumed. Funnily enough, he even commented about making beer that isn't the most groundbreaking or sensational but meant to be had in a pub or taproom. It's meant to be social.

Greg also had an interesting take on cask ale - it's the most sustainable form of beer drinking we can do. The nature of cask ale, no added carbonation, no ability to can or bottle, and a shorter shelf life necessitates beer production and consumption to be in equilibrium. He even offered a stat that simply canning beers has twice the amount of emissions than drinking cask ale. And, of course, you have to drink the cask ale in a pub or taproom surrounded by other people.

If we are talking about a sustainable future that is embedded in our culture, cask is a really great example of sustainable beer drinking that has evolved over the years to fit with our climate, our crops, and our social conditions.

It was the first time someone posited cask ale as the future, not the past.

There was so much to this conversation; I’m excited to sift through all the audio and unpack it a bit more when I get home.

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I think it was The Prancing Pony.

That inn from the Lord of the Rings where Frodo and the gang were supposed to meet Gandolf but ran into Strider/Aragorn instead.

Since reading and watching that series, I've had this vision of a medieval country inn - a convivial pub downstairs with pints being shared and spilled on old wood floors, and upstairs some beds for travelers to rest their wearing legs after a long walk. Ring or no ring.

So when we were planning a trip to the Cotswolds, staying in country inns was a requirement. I also found this website, so clearly I’m not the only one with that dream.

First was The Porch House in Stow-on-the-Wold. The structure is staggeringly old - initially built in 947 as a hospice (it's not haunted, as far as I could tell) and became an inn in the 18th century. It's a beautifully preserved building and, nowadays, probably more suited to the well-heeled traveler than it once was.

But it was still a nice place for a pint of cask ale after a long day.

Ironically enough, the area had a good amount of Lord of the Rings history that I didn’t know about until someone brought it up. In Stow-on-the-Wold, the doors to St. Edward's Church were apparently Tolkein’s inspiration for the Doors of Durin, and not too far away was The Bell Inn, the inspiration for the Prancing Pony (though it was a little anti-climactic to be honest).

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Admittedly, I’m a little behind on these daily missives. We had three interviews in a span of 24 hours, which, though fun, was pretty exhausting! More soon.

-Skylar