We were saddened to hear of the destruction of the 17th century barn which formerly house Good Things Brewery in a lightning-strike caused fire in July 2021. However, we are excited to learn that the brewery has been reborn as Allkin Brewing, and we hope to bring you more information about this new endeavour, soon. Pellicle would like to wish their best to anyone effected by this tragic accident.

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Some people only appear truly at home in one place.

Otherwise confident city-dwellers might shudder at their first unsteady totter over a muddy stile. Country folk occasionally jump at each distant siren, struggling to find comfort in even the smallest of cities. Others slip seamlessly between both environments. Like self-assured actors performing in front of a green screen, they have a character that never jars, and an ability to operate across both domains.

And then there are those rare people who not only fit in wherever they are, but manage to draw urban and rural worlds together, sewing the seam tight on both, and making one look upon the other with understanding and compassion. Chris Drummond, co-founder of Good Things Brewing Co. is one of them.

Hard-working, passionate and the teller of a good story, Chris has spent the last few years building a fully-sustainable, closed-loop brewery which—as was always planned—has now become so much more than the sum of its parts.

The home of Good Things is a former dairy farm atop a hill in the heart of the High Weald, five miles south-west of the nearest large town, Tunbridge Wells. The brewery is in East Sussex, but the verdant view from the brewhouse door is of the rolling Kent countryside. A group of busy ducks greets all visitors, and the indignant bleating of sheep rumbles from down the valley.

“I don’t believe in brewing in cities,” Chris explains. “I think it’s great and I’m glad people do because I love going to those breweries. But for me—and this sort of path we’re on—it was never going to be an option.”

In addition to its rural location, Good Things also has a foot firmly placed in the heart of the city—Chris’s hometown of Brighton—where a small taproom provides space to tell his brewery’s story, and an opportunity to bring sustainability directly to the table where urban drinkers sit.

An engineer by trade, he spent fifteen years working in the family sustainable engineering business. But a few years ago he made a change.

“I just had this thing where I wanted to do what my dad did, but on my own,” Chris says. “He’s one of my biggest idols and it sounds weird to then not take on his legacy. But that isn’t what he did. He didn’t take on someone’s legacy.”

Chris tells me this is one of two main reasons he started the brewery. The second is a little more ambitious. Simply put, he says he felt, “the need to do something for the planet.”

A few years of hard work into this project, Chris is doing just that. Along with childhood friend Russ Wheildon he initially set up Crafted Crate, a beer subscription service. Through this, the pair visited hundreds of breweries right across the country, gaining their unique insight into the brewing industry.

““When you consider the environment as a stakeholder in your company then sustainability becomes a no-brainer.””

— Colin Johnston, Crisp Malt

“We found every time we left a brewery, we were writing down notes like ‘okay, yeah, love the way they did that. Perhaps a little change and we could make this more sustainable’ and that just kind of got us into the process, got us into brewing,” Chris says.

He identifies his starting point as spent grain. Many brewers dispose of their waste by sending it for animal feed, but this is not always viable. Unless spent grain is ensiled in anaerobic conditions, it needs to be transported and consumed by livestock within two or three weeks or it risks becoming unusable. Over the past few years, the number of breweries has risen rapidly in the UK, particularly in urban areas, and this can lead to challenges in terms of getting grain to where it needs to be in time. Chris identified a need to reduce potential grain wastage, so decided to explore whether it was possible to dehydrate spent grain in order to stabilise and repurpose it.

Barley takes on roughly 150% of its own weight in water during the brewing process and for Chris, it was never as straightforward as simply drying it out. Whatever method he chose needed to be sustainable. After all, he didn’t want to solve one brewing problem only to create another energy-intensive process. The first of many experiments involved a second-hand tumble dryer in which Chris and Russ endeavoured to dehydrate 20 kilograms of wet grain. Unsurprisingly, the machine was destroyed within minutes.

After a couple more years, and a lot more research, a prototype dehydrator now sits beside the brewhouse—a symbol of what can be achieved when tenacity and belief meet skill and integrity. The dehydrator dries every handful of spent grain that Good Things produces and, as a result of some clever engineering, consumes remarkably little energy in the process.

But this was never a selfish endeavour. After all, Chris set out to “do something for the planet.” As such, he’s now developed a way to make a dehydrator small enough to fit into a ten-foot shipping container with a view to encouraging other breweries across the world—even urban breweries with little free space—to dehydrate their grain.

This has potential to have a very positive impact as this by-product of the brewing process can have a second life after it leaves the mash tun. At Good Things, it’s milled using a beautiful, handmade Austrian-manufactured flour mill that Chris affectionately calls “Heidi.” The resulting flour is extremely fine. Unusually low in carbohydrates whilst also being high in both fibre and protein—something of a “superfood.”

But brewing’s footprint on the world is much bigger than that generated by grain alone, and Chris and his team at Good Things have worked to address all aspects of the process in order to reduce or eliminate consumption and waste. As a result, rainwater is conserved for cleaning, and brewing water is sourced from an on-site 63-metre borehole. Soon a reed bed system will be in place to manage waste. Energy efficiency is built into every step of the process, and all the brewery’s power—from the brewhouse, to the dehydrator, and the electric delivery van—comes from a field of nearly 200 solar panels which have been carefully positioned in a re-landscaped field so as to make the modern technology invisible to most of the brewery’s neighbours.

Chris places great importance on the need to respect his immediate environment, making sure that any changes he makes are both necessary and positive. The dehydrator sits within a shipping container, but this is encased in a purpose-built barn which blends in perfectly with the rest of the site. An old stable block now houses the cold-store, and the brew kit itself sits inside an ancient barn that can be dated back to 1711.

At Good Things, sustainability isn’t simply a virtuous flag to be waved; it infuses every part of its process. Whether it’s respecting the history of the site, collaborating with others in the industry, developing sustainable brewing apprenticeships, or Chris’s plan to share the brewery’s excess power and fresh water with a nearby outdoor activity centre—each step forward is one that leaves behind only the smallest of footprints. The brewery is pointing out a path that others within the industry need to take.

“When you consider the environment as a stakeholder in your company then sustainability becomes a no-brainer,” Colin Johnston, craft sales and marketing manager at Crisp Malt, says. “Sustainability should be at the forefront of every businesses’ strategy in the new decade. Good Things is a great example of taking a very conscious approach to environmental impact. Not only are they walking the walk, but they’re also talking the talk, by educating the industry about the kind of things we can do to lessen our impact.”

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At its core, practising sustainably conveys hope, both for the planet and for future generations. Each beer brewed allows Good Things to further spread that message of hope. Their current output consists of a series of one-offs and seasonals such as saisons, stouts and double IPAs, together with a core range of three quality beers: Shift in Sight is a 5%, biscuity, well-balanced pilsner—the result of an eight-week lagering process; Reflection is a 4% pale ale with a floral aroma and a juiciness that’s deep enough to drench yourself in; and Restoring Balance is a 5.5% IPA, brewed with oats and wheat, and just enough of a citrus-bitter bite.

““You’ll never see us shout ‘taste this juicy beer, it’s got twenty grams a litre in it.’””

— Chris Drummond, Good Things Brewing Co.

Head brewer Darryl Mills (ex-Dark Star Brewery) ensures all the beers are measured and balanced examples of their style. The use of adjuncts is rare at Good Things, and the brewery is aiming to produce a beer brewed solely with ingredients sourced from within a seven-mile radius of the brewery.

“[Good Things] beers speak for themselves really,” Joseph Ince, head of production at Manchester’s Marble Brewery, tells me. “Everything is cared for so well… It all shows the love the guys have for their craft and what they’re doing.”

Good Things collaborated with a handful of northern breweries in November 2020, including Marble and Leeds-based North Brew Co. Through combined efforts like this, this industry is able to learn from one-another that operating sustainably involves making difficult choices about both ingredients and processes—as Crisp Malt’s Colin Johnston explains.

“One of things I like the most about our industry is how intimately connected we are to the rural economy, and how our fates are intertwined with the careful stewardship of the land. British barley and hops can only survive if we are cognisant of climate change, soil degradation, the correct use of fertilisers, the careful management of energy in malting, and in the reduction of single-use plastics,’ he says.

In contrast to many of its contemporaries, Good Things loudly celebrates the fact that it achieves the desired flavour profile of their beers through the use of only a minimum amount of hops per litre.

“You’ll never see us shout ‘taste this juicy beer, it’s got twenty grams a litre in it,” Chris explains, “We understand that there’s a saturation point and it’s way below twenty for us. It becomes a pointless waste of thousands of pounds of hops, and a pointless waste of energy.”

“We did it once… and the second we released it we went ‘what have we done?’ And I know it was the norm at the time but it’s a silly norm in our world… For us, and the quest we’re on, that was the opposite of what we should be doing.”

Talking with Chris quickly makes you realise that—in addition to producing delicious beer—he is indeed on a quest. As he slowly knits together tradition and innovation, romance and practicality, rural and urban, it’s clear that his mission is far from over. His optimism is contagious and that’s all part of the plan.

“If I could affect one other brewery to become more sustainable —or one business—then it’s a good job done.”